there's something about you, boy
by GryfoTheGreat
Summary: ...but you're still the same. Collection of oneshots written for Jeankasa Week on Tumblr. Ratings vary. Complete!
1. Lifted

**Jeankasa Week Day 1: Hair**

**Title:** Lifted  
**Rating:** T**  
Fandom:** Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan  
**Characters:** Jean Kirschtein, Mikasa Ackerman, Marco Bodt, most of the 104th, Jeankasa  
**Summary:** Jean and Mikasa get a little... _tangled_.  
**Notes:** I you don't want to have a 3DMG IRL, you're a lying liar.

* * *

This is it. This is the race. This is a race Jean Kirschtein has to win, in order to assert his aerial superiority!

...and maybe to impress Mikasa too.

It had all started out simply, when Connie, in his great wisdom, decided that since the practice 3DMGs were free and they had a rare free afternoon due to one of the instructors having a mental breakdown they should race through the forest using the 3DMGs. Marco had wheedled permission out of Shadis somehow, but that was Marco. Jean thinks it's the freckles.

In any case, Jean hadn't wanted to join in. He was looking forward to his nap, until Connie got all up in his face and said that Eren was joining in too, secure in the confidence that he could beat Jean. If Eren was joining in, so was Mikasa, and with those two competing the rest of the trainees would most likely join in, so if Jean didn't he would be a loner weirdo and end up dead in a ditch on his own half-eaten by Alsatians.

Ymir had added in that last bit. Connie had choked on his spit and Christa had started apologising profusely, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Jean, while happy to be mean to most, felt that making Christa cry was akin kicking a puppy and stealing its food, so after reassuring the poor girl that he hadn't taken any offense, promised that he would join in.

He knew he was better than most with the and Sasha were good too, but Connie tended to ignore the actual physics of it and overestimate his speed, and Sasha broke hers far too regularly. He had never snapped a single strap, whereas several others had completely broken theirs and had to get total replacements, he had never gotten what the other trainees called 'leather burn' from the straps, and he had never broken any grappling wires, and... Well, Mikasa was entering. Part of him wanted to impress her, but the other part wanted to see if he was better than her. He was almost sure he could beat her.

Almost.

But that was before Shadis, in the spirit of competition, declared that the winner would be off kitchen duty for the next week. A simple race soon became an all-out war.

Uniforms were sabotaged, gear was ripped, people were tripped, and generally everybody made fools of themselves. Many withdrew, frightened, while others solidified their determination to compete. There was a tense confrontation between Ymir and Annie in the mess hall, which unfortunately did not lead to clothes-ripping, despite the many teenage boys yelling "CATFIGHT!"

And, now, it is time.

Marco stands at his elbow, rocking back and forward on the balls of his feet, bangs swaying.

"You're... nervous?" Jean whispers, leaning over to him.

Marco stops rocking. "No!" And then he starts again.

Jean sighs. Marco is nervous, he knows it; he only does that stupid rocking thing when he is anxious, just like the way he rubs the back of his neck when he's talking to an instructor he's scared of, and just like he chews the inside of his lip while thinking.

"Well, man, we're gonna win. Okay? Can't let the girls show us up."

Marco stills. "Yeah!" he whisper-shouts. Then he starts rocking _again_. "Even though that was sexist and they're way better."

Jean punches him, just in time for Mina to yell "START!" and for all of them to take off with a jerk, yanked forward inexorably like moths to a flame.

People fall in the first few minutes. Thomas wipes out when his grapple hook doesn't embed itself properly, and Samuel collides with another trainee, landing in a tangle on the ground. Jean doesn't care; he is flying, soaring, kept in the air by a few fragile strings.

It's easy, really. He has to use his gas here, make a turn there, twist to shoot his grapple hook there; it is like a wondrous equation, variables of wire and body working in harmony with constants of earth and sky.

In no time he is at the end, and he bursts through feet first, the red ribbon snapping and folding around him as he swings up, letting out a triumphant roar. The instructor balanced on the branch nearby congratulates him loudly, and Jean decides to eschew walking and return aerially.

But when he turns around, he sees Mikasa, barrelling towards him with a vengeance, the finish line her only objective. Jean tries desperately to change his course but he can't, he's too far gone now-

And just as she crosses the finish, they swing into one another and collide in a tangle of wires and arms and screaming.

Sasha zooms past them and almost faceplants into the forest floor, laughing hard enough to burst something.

"Jean?" Mikasa asks, words muffled by his thigh.

"Y-yeah?" he squeaks, neck caught uncomfortably on one of her 3DMG harness' straps.

"I am going to kill you. _Painfully._"

"Great!" he replies. "Just... can we leave that for another time? I'm kinda stuck."

As she growls at him, their hooks slip and they lurch wildly. Jean starts going 'holy shit!' really loudly, even though the instructors are right there and will probably castrate him for swearing. Mikasa lets out a little high-pitched scream.

"Jean, calm down!" Mikasa's hand is fumbling at his leg, trying to free a lock of her hair.

"Okay. Okay." He breathes in erratically, hyper conscious of every inch of Mikasa that is pressed to him. "We have to get down before we fall and die."

"So if I just move like..." She tries to raise her arm, but only succeeds in pressing her chest more firmly into his abdomen, which is pretty much the opposite of helping. He can almost hear his hormones shrieking in joy.

"Uh..." Jean tries to wiggle away from her a little, but that fails horrifically too, causing his belt to snag her scarf.

"Don't _move-_"

"Mikasa? You need help?" Armin waves at them vaguely, hanging lopsided from a nearby ash.

"_No._" The words are snapped through bared teeth, her lips pulled back a little. The vehemence of her statement makes them swing a little in midair.

"Stop _moving!_" Jean hisses through his teeth.

This is _awkward_, more awkward than that one time Sasha hid cream buns in her bra, even more awkward than the time Marco screamed 'JEAN!' while sleeping and then fell out of bed, definitely more awkward than the time that Reiner-

_No._ He is _not_ thinking about that now.

"Can you push away from me a little?" he asks her. Mikasa braces her hands against his thighs and digs her knees into his shoulder to make a little space. It isn't ideal, but he can at least begin to untangle them.

He moves his hands from her back, where they'd settled in the initial collision, and tries to get her scarf out first. It takes a few tries but he gets it off of his belt.

"Can I take this off?" he asks. She nods, and he unwinds it from around her neck, bending down a little and tossing the thing down to Armin. It lands on his face and he lets out a little squawk.

He tries to shift again, but his jacket is caught in her pants. He eventually gets the goddamn thing off, but they wobble wildly in midair and Mikasa crashes into his stomach with an 'oof!' as he tosses that down too. Marco catches it and drops it immediately to smother his laughter with his hands

"Sorry, sorry!" She shakes her head, her nose brushing his leg. "Should I take my jacket off too?" His mind is doing things with that statement that it shouldn't be.

"W-would you mind? It might be easier..."

"Can you take it off?" His heart starts to hammer harder. By now, almost everyone has finished the race and is gathered beneath them, watching the aerial spectacle as if it were a circus act.

"Uh, sure...?" He reaches down carefully and his hands find the hem of the jacket and brush against her ribs. He stretches down further and pulls his legs up, crushing Mikasa closer to him so he can get at her jacket more easily. He grabs her lapels, knuckles against her chest, and carefully slides the jacket off her shoulders and down her bare arms. When her jacket falls, her brother catches it.

"How you two doing up there?" Eren chirps.

"Fan-fucking -tastic," Jean replies as he tries not to jostle Mikasa's head too much, seeing as her hair is still caught. His hands are shaking. Mikasa tries to help him, moving her hands to tug on a belt of hers that is digging into his cheek, but it only makes them tilt at an alarming angle. Her breathing is quick as she grabs onto him, the wires that hold them in suspension twisting.

"Sorry," she pants, hands going to his waist. "I shouldn't have done that."

"It's okay," he reassures her. "We'll get out without breaking our necks...! I hope."

She lets out a breathless laugh. "Killed by our own 3DMG and not by titans... Who would've thought?"

"Hurry up, you two!" Reiner calls. "The teachers are gonna cut you down if you two don't get a move on!"

"Shit...!" He pushes away form Mikasa and she manages to untangle her hair from his belt. It only takes them a few more minutes and a few awkward contortions, her foot hooked around his neck, to free each other. Mikasa is able to re-orient herself, face flushed from hanging upside down. Jean tries desperately to quell the redness in his cheeks as she twists clockwise, using the straps of his harness as handholds.

Now, all that's left is their twisted wires. They hold onto each other to keep from flopping over. "I'll go west, you go east," he tells her, and Mikasa nods. They place the soles of their boots against each others', brace their palms together and propel away from each other. They swing clockwise for a few moments to untangle the wires, but when they are finally completely free Mikasa falls; luckily, Bertholdt is there to catch her and she plummets ungracefully into his arms.

Jean manages to get down on his own, even if he stumbles when he lands. He also headbutts Connie, but the skinhead doesn't mind too much, seeing as he and Sasha are clutching onto each other in an attempt not to topple over from laughing too hard.

Marco rushes over to him and starts patting him down. "Jean! Are you okay?" He throws his jacket at his face.

He pushes his friend away a little. "I," he begins, and stops to see Eren getting given out to by a scarfless and jacketless Mikasa, "am going to find the nearest water source and immerse myself in it." He pauses. "For the next _week_."

Marco bursts out laughing. "Well, you got to get really close to Mikasa, and you won, so I don't think the whole thing was a waste!" He steps back from his friend. "Race you back?"

"I think I've had enough of races," Jean sighs, but when Marco takes off, Jean darts after him, jacket landing in the dirt.

**extra**

"It just..." Mikasa's eyes sparkle.

"Pops back up?" She leans further to him, enraptured.

"Yes...!" she breathes, tugging on a strand of sandy hair.

Jean sighs shakily. "Do you have to obsess over my hair?"

"It defies gravity..." Mikasa whispers as she tugs the brush through his hair. It stays flat for about two seconds, and then fluffs itself back up. Mikasa lets out a squeal like a girl with a new puppy, and begins to ruffle his hair again.

Jean endures it for a few seconds, and then makes up his mind, grabbing her wrists and pushing her into the bed.

"Jean? What are you- mmph!"

She still touches his hair, but Jean finds that he doesn't mind.


	2. keep ya shirt on

**Jeankasa Week Day 2: Confession**

**Title:** keep ya shirt on  
**Rating:** K**  
Fandom:** Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan  
**Characters:** Mikasa Ackerman, Jean Kirschtein, most of the 104th, Jeankasa  
**Summary:** T-shirts and teenage awkwardness. You can't be a soldier all the time, can you?  
**Notes:** The working title for this was 'Ultimate Noodle Incident.' Some of Mikasa's views on love are, sadly enough, derived from my own. Be warned; ellipses abound.

* * *

"_Well, this is awkward_." Mikasa thinks, barely managing to keep her fingers from messing with the hem of her coat.

It was bad enough trying to get out here, from Sasha's unsubtle winks and Christa's knowing glances. She thinks Armin copped on about ten minutes ago, but the worst was Eren.

"Mikasa, where are you going?" he had asked.

"Out." Eren generally didn't need a lot of explanation for answers, so she hoped that would stave him off.

"Out? It's pretty cold, I'll go with you." He hopped up from the bench, managing not to trip over it and do a pratfall this time. "What exactly are you doing outside?"

She tried to give him the Look, but Eren didn't notice. She loved her brother more than anything, but sometimes she wondered if he could channel some of his determination into getting a little common sense.

"Girl...stuff." Eren's face had fallen.

"Um..."

"I'll-I'll be fine on my own." Mikasa had made the speediest retreat possible, Ymir laughing like a loon behind her. What Annie said was true; she really did sound like a dog getting sick when she laughed.

And now here Mikasa is on a boreal November night, standing behind the rec hall. She had chosen this location because a) it was sheltered and thus wasn't as snowy and b) you couldn't see it from the dormitories. It is rather chilly, but Mikasa has her scarf on so it isn't that bad.

She looks skyward, where the clots of clouds have blotted out all the blue. The snow is falling lightly, small flurries gusting around the cabins. She sticks her tongue out to see if she can catch some in a poor imitation of a childish memory.

"M-Mikasa?"

She almost chokes on her tongue.

Jean is standing in front of her in all his lanky glory. She notices that he hasn't bothered with a scarf or a hat or anything, and his ears are turning red from the cold.

Or that might be embarrassment. Whatever it is, it's oddly cute.

"Hi...?" Jean is stumbling backwards, hands raised before him. "Sorry, I must have got the wrong place... I'll just go..." He turns around to flee, but not before Mikasa catches his hand and pulls him back.

"And where do you think you're going?" She doesn't mean to sound so threatening, but it works because Jean stops in his tracks and swivels around to stare at her, baffled.

"This isn't a prank... is it?" he asks shakily. "Like, Reiner isn't gonna burst out of nowhere stark naked and tackle me?" She shakes her head mutely and he lets out a relieved sigh. "Good... Uh." His cheeks get redder as his hand trembles in hers and she lets go quickly; he trips a bit but manages to steady himself.

"I... have a confession to make." Jean's eyebrows shoot up. "I've been meaning to say this for a while, but I couldn't find the courage..." His mouth is open, and she can't help but notice that his lips are chapped. "I..." Jean squeaks. "I... took..." His shoulders slump visibly. "Itookyourshirt!" she blurts out, hands clenching and knees snapping together.

Jean looks considerably taken aback. "Whuh?" he manages after a few seconds of incredulous staring.

"Ymir dared me to steal it during our sleepover last week a-and I snuck into your room and got it-"

"Was Marco doing anything weird?" he interrupts her.

"Not as far as I can recall."

"Good, because-" he notices the look she's giving him and cuts himself off. "N-nothing! Keep going, keep going."

"And anyway I brought it back, and I meant to put it back the next day, but... I kept it. I'm sorry." She can feel blood rushing to her cheeks. "I have it here now, I can give it back to you-"

"No, no no..." He stops her mid-speech. "It's fine, you can keep it."

"Are you sure?" Mikasa finds herself stepping towards him involuntarily.

"Y-yeah! But, in return..." His hand rises to the back of his neck and rubs it, and she finds herself distracted by the gesture. He averts his eyes. "Y-you have to... give me... one of your shirts..." The words trail off.

"Oh?"

"Um, sorry, that was weird, you don't have to-"

"No, that's fine... I will!" He looks so bewildered, and she finds herself looking into his eyes. She has never noticed them before but they're a shade of warm amber, like a strong cup of ginger tea.

"Ah... okay?" His hands reach toward her but swing back down to his sides again.

"Meet me here at the same time tomorrow," she orders, and he nods jerkily.

"I gotta go..." Jean flaps his hands nervously. "See you...?"

She waves at him as he runs off, her hand falling limply to her side.

"Shirt..." she mutters to herself. "Why?"

She decides to go inside, before the snow starts piling up on her eyelashes.

The instant she steps inside the door, Christa, Ymir and Sasha grab her and drag her off to their shared dormitory. When they get there Annie is reading on her bunk, but they're not too worried. The girl had even helped with last week's sleepover plans, suggesting Mikasa's sting mission to infiltrate the male dormitory and retrieve poor Jean's shirt.

"Well?" Sasha blurts out, grabbing her shoulders. "What happened?"

Mikasa carefully disengages her friend and sits down on the floor. Her friends fan around her, like little kids listening to teacher tell a story. She recounts the incident, rushing certain parts. She tries to sound disinterested and make out as if it were trivial, when really...

Mikasa has never had time for romance. What's the point of a relationship, if you can't feed yourself? Love won't put bread into hungry mouths. Besides, the ultimate result of love is reproduction, and when you're sixteen you may be capable of it, but you won't be able to handle it. Thus, Mikasa has made the conscious decision to harden her heart to stone and to dismiss all romantic entanglements as pointless. The energy other girls expend on crushes, she puts into Eren.

But when she sees Jean, she feels strange. Her thoughts slow down, she stops talking mid-sentence to stare at him, and her heart thumps hard when he laughs. It isn't an entirely unpleasant feeling, through.

"So... a shirt?" Christa leans forward. Her hair hangs into her eyes, but she doesn't seem to mind.

"A shirt." Mikasa confirms it with a nod.

"Oh, we could have some fun with this..." Ymir's eyes sparkle wickedly. "Lemme see!" The girl springs up and darts over to Mikasa's wardrobe to have a rummage. Mikasa trails after her, sighing. When Ymir has her mind set on something, there's no dissuading her.

"Here, I wanna see!" Sasha joins them, bounding over to have a look with Christa in pursuit.

"This?"

"Nah, too boring. What about this one?"

"I'd be ashamed to give that to a dog, never mind Horse Boy!"

"Hey, look here..."

"No. Not that one. I like it."

"Won't Jean like it, then?"

"We're not going for like! We're going for max embarrassment!"

"This one."

Ymir stops and stares at Annie, who stands adjacent to her.

"Huh?" Christa's head pops up, a pair on unmentionables hanging off her ear.

Annie pulls a garment out of Mikasa's drawer, and Sasha lets out a gasp.

The top is diaphanous, made of delicately embroidered silk, ivory and whisper-thin. Its straps are as fine as strand of hair, and the back is laced together with flimsy thread. Safe to say, Mikasa didn't actually buy it herself. Sasha bought it for her as a joke, and Mikasa had buried it as deep in her wardrobe as possible, unwilling to throw a gift away.

"No." Mikasa crosses her arms over her chest.

"Yes." Annie's eyes are slightly warmer than usual.

"Won't that be mean?" Christa chews on her lip.

"Don't worry!" Sasha slings an arm around the blonde's petite shoulders. "Jean deserves it, he still teases me about that potato thing..." Sasha humphs. "Why won't anyone get over- YMIR!"

Ymir crashes into Sasha to knock her off Christa, and as Sasha thumps down to the ground, Ymir hugs Christa tightly. "It's perfect! Couldn't have done better myself."

Annie throws the top at Mikasa, who catches it out of reflex. "There. Give that to him, and I promise I'll go easier on Eren during training."

"Deal." Mikasa barely hesitates.

The rest of the girls salute her, and then the dinner bell goes. Mikasa tosses the shirt onto her bed and flees.

Mikasa spends the rest of the day in a nervous daze, which is so out of character that Armin has her walking down to the medical ward before she even notices it. She eats all her food, even the Brussels sprouts, and ignores Eren when he asks if he can have her roast potato. She can hear Marco laughing a few tables over, Jean joining in after a few seconds.

The feeling is strange, like her heart strings are pulled taut to the point of snapping. It is similar to the rush she gets before they have an exam or a training exercise, but sweeter, somehow, if pain can be described as sweet.

She washes the dinner dishes without complaint, and when she goes to bed after changing into his stolen t-shirt she doesn't lie awake and analyse her thoughts, like she usually does, but instead falls asleep almost immediately. Her dreams are garbled but soothing, a regurgitation of training and the barracks spliced madly together.

When she wakes up, the snow has stopped, but it has stuck. The ground outside is carpeted in thick white, not yet spoiled by horse prints and the trampling boots of soldiers. Nobody pays much attention to their breakfast, instead concentrating on the bleached landscape.

She spends the morning in the stables with Bertholdt and Reiner. The horses are somewhat skittish around the two boys, so they mostly clean up while she takes care of the horses, even though they don't like her much better. The sound of the two of them talking is reassuring as she soaps down the tack.

Before she knows it, she's back outside again in the shadow of the rec hall. The clouds have melted away overnight to reveal a watercolour sky, with the sun a pale disc in the centre. The package in her hands crinkles as she clenches it a little tighter. He'll show up, won't he?

And as reliable as clockwork, Jean does appear at exactly the same time he did yesterday, only this time he makes no attempt to escape. The snow crunches beneath his feet, and his ears glow red.

"You forgot to wear a scarf again." His gaze drops and he rubs the back of his neck again, toe of his boot scuffing the ground.

"... I'd feel like I was impinging on your territory." She laughs and his cheeks flush.

"Here." She thrusts the package in his direction and he accepts it timidly. Jean examines and it, and then begins to tear one edge open. "No!" she exclaims, quickly grabbing his hands. "D-don't open it here..."

"O-okay! Um... I'll just go." When she lets go of his hand she feels a strange pang of loss, and after he leaves she spends a while leaning against the wall of the rec hall, watching the sun slowly sink though the sky.

Later on, the barracks is shaken by a shriek. Trainee Jean Kirschtein is rushed to medical after a fainting attack. Mikasa, after spending ages wondering whether she should write 'Love, Mikasa' or not, leaves him a handmade get well soon card.

(The nook behind the rec hall becomes their meeting spot.)


	3. love is a friendship caught aflame

**Jeankasa Week Day 3: Wound**

**Title:** love is a friendship caught aflame  
**Rating:** T  
**Fandom:** Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan  
**Characters:** Jean Kirschtein, Mikasa Ackerman, Levi, Eren Jaeger, Armin Arlert, Jeankasa  
**Summary:** Assassin's Creed III Crossover - The Creed says to stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent. This basic rule is one Mikasa must break._  
_**Notes:** AC III era, since IMO AC I and II are overused (gomen Ezio) and I'll probably never ever get my hands on Black Flag muffled ugly sobbing. Completely due to all the badass Assassin's Creed/Attack on Titan fanart. (I may or not be wearing my Connor t-shirt as I type this.)

* * *

They dart soundlessly through the night, not even dislodging the snow from the branches on which they land.

It feels like Mikasa is alone in the forest, as if she were the last human remaining in this wilderness, but she knows better than that. Jean is nearby, even if she cannot hear him, and the animals of the forest snuffle below, but there are many enemies skulking around in the undergrowth too.

Templars.

She hears a strange call, that of an owl. Jean is ahead, scouting; he must have found something ahead.

Sure enough, when she catches up to him Jean has halted and is crouched on a tree limb. He does not greet her, instead focusing all his attention on the convoy approaching them. This is their target; the carriage is loaded with firebombs intended for the ravage of a nearby stronghold. Hidden as they are in the foliage of the forest, and with the maelstrom of a blizzard screeching round them acting as a screen, the redcoats are almost blind.

Jean spins towards her slowly, carefully, hand reaching out towards her, and the branch creaks alarmingly beneath him. Jean wobbles, barely managing to keep his balance, and Mikasa springs up to leap towards him, but-

"There they are!"

The gut-wrenching sound of gunfire cracks through the air and several musket balls whiz through the air. Jean dodges most of them, but several thud into the branch beneath him, and one perforates his side. He falls off the branch in slow motion, a puppet with his strings cut, and without thinking Mikasa dives after him.

She collides with him in mid-air and winds her arms around him securely before they crash to the ground. She rolls up swiftly onto her feet, and assesses the situation.

One well guarded convoy. Roughly ten men, armed to the teeth. No loose horses. Two assassins, one injured, the extent of said injury unknown. She estimates the chance of victory to be about fifteen percent.

Mikasa has always been good in impossible situations. She lays Jean at her feet, and begins.

She tosses a poisoned knife at the beefiest man and dodges away from the blows that another soldier is aiming at her, dancing away and pouncing forward to sink her hidden blade through the man's throat; one. She pushes him aside and grabs the next man to use as a shield when the redcoats form a line and fire; two. She heaves his body forward and throws a few knives with deadly accuracy as they cope with knockback, managing to severely wound a few. By then the poison has started to affect the big man, and he thrashes wildly, blades swinging. He catches a few by surprise and injures then too, so Mikasa take advantage and strikes; three, four, five. One redcoat jabs a halberd at her, which is his downfall; she grabs it and forces it through his stomach. Six. Two swing a blade at her, and she ducks under the blow and lashes her leg out to knock them to the ground, unconscious; she will slit their throats after. Eight-no, nine, the poisoned one has just collapsed. The final one stares at her, wide-eyed, and runs like the yellowbelly he is, so she pulls out her bow, notches an arrow, draws and fires. The arrow catches him though the heart, bringing the tenth and final one down. She moves noiselessly over to the unconscious men, and after whispering a short blessing, plunges her blades into their throats simultaneously.

She stands up, flicks her blades to rid them of blood and sheathes them.

There is a wet cough behind her, and it cuts through the red mist of violence that cloaks her mind. _Jean._ She drops down beside him and cradles him in her arms.

"You get them?" The words are hoarse, and Mikasa's grip on Jean tightens.

"Of course I did." He smiles at her though bloody lips and lets out a bitter laugh, head lolling back.

"Sorry. I affected the mission, didn't I? Levi's gonna be pissed." The snow is collecting in his hair, icing his eyelashes.

"Levi's always pissed," she mutters, hands finding the flower of blood blooming on the side of her partner's white robe. "He'll be apoplectic if you die, so try not to do that."

"Don't I always obey you, brother?" She lets out a snort, pulls him into her arms and stands up, the weight of his body in her arms keeping her grounded.

She lays him in the back of the wagon before entering. She defuses the bombs easily, rendering the gunpowder useless with water and snapping the triggers and wires. She rummages around and emerges with a few medical supplies; bandages, strips of leather, scalpels.

She moves over to Jean and fumbles with his robe; his breathing is growing laboured, and she notes with dread that the wound is still pumping red. She has to seal it before he loses too much blood, but with what?

Her eyes land on the flat scalpel, and the flint and steel in her pouch grows heavier.

She has to do it now. She sets the fire first, letting it grow to a small blaze on the ground outside. She taps on Jean's jaw, and he opens his mouth obediently so she can insert one piece of leather. She gives him the other two to hold and he nods at her, eyes fogged over with pain.

She takes the musket ball out as quickly as possible, blocking out Jean's pained moan as best she can. Unfortunately, it is well and truly lodged, and she has to wiggle it out with a scalpel. Jean's knuckles turn white. She rinses the hole in his side with the water in her canteen and pats it dry with the clean cloth of the bandages.

Now, the hard part. She holds the scalpel in the fire and smoothes a hand over Jean's brow. He is covered with cold sweat, and she is scared that she is too late. She cannot lose him; Jean is the best partner she's ever had, even if he doesn't always do exactly as he's told. Moreover, he is a friend, someone she has spent countless watches with tracking the path of the constellations across the darkening sky, trading stories and tears.

He raises a hand to her cheek, and she pulls the scalpel out of the fire. He grips the leather just as she begins.

The sizzle of burning flesh blocks out the sounds of the forest and the acrid smell burns her nose and brings tears to her eyes. Jean's arms thrash involuntarily against the wood, his struggles growing weaker over time as she sticks the scalpel back into the fire to heat it up again. His agonised whimpers will haunt her dreams for weeks.

"I'm so sorry," she stammers, trying to keep her hands steady. "I'm so sorry Jean, I shouldn't be..."

It takes her five hellish minutes to cauterize the wound fully. When she's done, she flings the scalpel away from her and hurriedly pours water over the wound again. She crouches down over him and presses her ear to his chest; his heart is thrumming rapidly. He lets go of the leather in his hands and raises one weakly to place it on her head. He removes the leather from between his teeth as well, half bitten through as it is.

"I'm okay," he whispers, voice cracked. "I'll live."

"You're not allowed to die, ever." Her voice is almost inaudible.

"I don't plan on it."

She presses her hand to his ribs and lets her tears soak his chest. This is the closest she has come to losing a partner, but Jean knows the pain too well. "Neither do I."

When the snowstorm begins to calm down, she heaves Jean to his feet and manages to get him onto one of the horses without jarring his side too much. The ride back to the base is quiet except for the sound of hoof beats, of falling snow, and of the reassuringly regular rhythm of Jean's breath. Mikasa finds herself inhaling and exhaling in time with him. Their breath forms a halo of frozen cloud around them.

When she enters the base with Jean slung over her back, there is uproar. Eren and Armin almost bowl straight over to her, but Levi halts them with a yell.

"Brother Ackerman! Did you mission succeed?"

"Yes, Mentor Levi. We eliminated the convoy and neutralised the bombs."

"Did you ensure the continued survival of Brother Kirschtein?" Jean smiles into her shoulder.

"I did, Mentor Levi."

He cracks a small smile. "Well done, Brothers. Your mission has been a success." And with that the flood is broken, and all the recruits pile onto them. Jean is hoisted off her shoulders by Annie and Connie, and Armin and Eren hug her as tight as they can.

"You were gone for too long!" Eren shouts into her ear. "We were so worried!"

Armin digs his chin into her shoulder. "I knew you'd get there. Now-"

"Sorry, but can I change? Covered in blood and all that." They relinquish her quickly, and she squeezes her brothers' hands and darts off to bathe.

At the end of her bath, the water is sickly red.

Afterwards, when she is dried and dressed, she sneaks into Jean's room. In sleep he looks peaceful, blankets snarled around him, knees pulled up to his chest. When she twitches the sheets aside, his side is nicely dressed and bandaged.

Her hands hover above the wound, and she bites her lip. Something is sparking in her brain, impulses running down her nerves and telling her to touch, to commit the antithesis of what she did earlier; to run her hand along his jaw, to tangle her fingers in his hair

She fixes the sheets and trails her fingers over his forehead and though his hair. He turns his face into her touch, a sleepy smile crossing his face, and she can't help smiling giddily in response, heart thumping so loudly she's half-afraid it will wake him up.

She raises two of her fingers to her lips, kisses them, and presses them to Jean's chapped lips. "Rest well, brother."

She leaves noiselessly, and when the door clicks shut Jean's eyes flicker open.


	4. the future is not a straight line

**Jeankasa Week Day 4: Safe**

**Title:** the future is not a straight line  
**Rating:** M (no sex, just gore)**  
Fandom:** Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan  
**Characters:** Jean Kirschtein, Mikasa Ackerman, Marco Bodt, most of the Scouting Legion, Jeankasa  
**Summary:** Cyberpunk AU – Real love, real friends, fake heart. (Or: Jean the grease monkey meets Mikasa the biker and, for once, things _happen_.)  
**Words:** 12,050 (!)  
**Notes:** BIKER CYBERPUNK YEAHHHH. I am utterly clueless when it comes to bikes, technology, etc., so if something doesn't make sense it is because I'm bullshitting like a matador. I made an FST for this... does someone want to make it a cooler cover?

* * *

The motorcycle thrums beneath his fingers, a marvel of polished chrome and humming plasma tubes. Ruined chrome and plasma.

"Marco, I told you to stop doing those crazy swerves!" Jean sighs gustily, and digs his fingers into the guts of the bike. "You're either gonna tear you leg off or rip the bike open, and I'm not dealing with either fucking one!"

Marco lets out a sheepish laugh. "Aw, man, Jean... those Titan guys are tough, you know? They always get me cornered, and I had to get away before they skewered me with those weird crystally thingies..."

Jean huffs "Whatever. Leave me and Baby alone." Marco dodges out the door and up the stairs, flopping his hand behind him as the light outlines him, the wings on the back of his brown leather jacket half torn-off.

Jean isn't truly an Angel, even though he fixes a lot of their motorcycles. No Enhanced are allowed to don the wings, even if Jean would argue that he has actually been defiled, if anything, because his arm doesn't always cooperate with him and sometimes his heart sputters out for a few milliseconds, caught in flux between diastole and systole.

But rules are rules and thus Jean remains unaffiliated in his basement shop with the guns rigged up outside and a direct line to the nearby Thai takeaway. He swaps out the attachments on his fingers, manually pumps his heart a few times (bad habit), and gets to work.

The radio plays while he works, flickering between experimental dub, pirate news broadcasts, and static.

"The Angels... large confrontation... the Titan Operation... Commandant orders... death toll rising..."

Jean grits his teeth and levers a joint into place, grabbing a small welding gun and firing it. He bangs his wrist on the table and a reinforced Perspex screen pops out, which he holds in front of his face. The damage isn't too hard to repair, but it helps that Jean knows this motorbike inside out. Marco had originally built it himself, but it fell to pieces during his first ride, and he'd been directed to a one-handed mechanic who had rebuilt it faster and better. That bike had gotten him into the Angels. Later, when Marco had made enough money, he got Jean his cybernetic arm.

Jean works until the sun rises, and after he repairs the damage he tunes the suspension; when the silly mechanical cockerel he has installed crows, he abandons his work and collapses into the nest of blankets in the corner of the shop. He plugs his Enhancements into the outlets right beside him, wires humming with joules and joules of energy.

As usual, he does not dream. They stopped after the arm.

He wakes up to a power outage, to which he swears. To fix the generator he has to go outside, and leave his bunker and its filtered air. Outside, breathing normally isn't a great idea; most people wear disposable filter masks, but Jean ran out a while ago.

Also, his bed is _really _warm.

He gets up eventually, though, since electricity is his lifeblood in more ways than one. He wraps a damp rag around his mouth as a flimsy safeguard, and emerges into the light.

Describing it as light is being generous. This late in the evening, and with the constant smog of pollution blocking out the sky, the light is dim and comes mainly from neon signs, yellow windows and the telltale blue and red flashes of police chases, Brigadiers on the tail of motorcycles they'll never catch.

Jean's neighbourhood, Trost, isn't a place where most people would want to live. The houses are ragged, kept up by the tungsten carbide cables that connect them, and gaudy signs hang off every wall like cheap plastic jewellery. The lower levels of the buildings house barbers, head shops, takeaways, pubs, internet cafés, whorehouses, and so on and so forth. Electropumps stick out of the ground every few meters, most of them defective. This kind of neighbourhood is common within Wall Maria, the outermost ring of the city of Eden and easily the most troubled; here, gangs of bikers rule over a kingdom of shanty towns and long-condemned apartment blocks. Here, the sole ambition of most people is to get up out of the muck and filth of Maria and into the middle-class normality of Wall Rose. Of course, some people have lost their ambition and simply live day to day, heedless of whether they're in the middle of Wall Sina in the Commandant's Palace or in a suffocating capsule in a seedy motel.

Jean isn't sure which faction he belongs to.

His generator is embedded in a nearby wall. He uses his bionic arm to open it, pressing a finger into an almost unnoticeable groove in the wall. It unlocks with a satisfying 'swoosh,' and Jean sticks his head inside. The generator goes off very week or so, but it's usually just some stupid problem. This time it is no different; as it turns out, the regulator is stuck on one setting. He jiggles a few pieces around and it flips back into life, fans beginning to whirr downstairs.

When his lungs begin to ache he shuts the generator, conscious of the city smoke clinging to his alveoli, but while Jean is descending into his shop he hears a roar, an unmistakeable one, the hunting call of a motorcycle. He freezes, and doesn't turn around.

"Are you the mechanic?" Her shadow falls across him as he turns around, shifting and colouring his grubby white t-shirt black.

"The mechanic has a name."

She smiles at that through her transparent mask, all teeth and predatory glint. "Jean Kirschtein, I hope."

"Charmed," he says, extending his un-Enhanced arm. He doesn't miss the way her eyes fall on his Enhanced arm, the glowing nerves running underneath his skin and up past the sleeve of his top. "Mikasa Ackerman." The Angel's second strongest, the woman worth a hundred men.

She reaches out her arm and the short hem of her jacket shifts, showing that the bandages wrapped around her abdomen extend up to her chest and further. When he grabs her hand it is strong, meat of her thumb sinewed with muscle, palm lines bolded by scars. He pulls out of her grip a few moments too late, absorbed by the metal of her eyes - is it steel? Iron? Platinum? – and flees down the stairs. She follows him, fingers brushing against the grooves in the walls made by spare parts and bullets, bike propped on the hoverplate that runs down to his shop, installed after one too many faceplants by Marco plus bike down said stairs.

"So, what brings you to my humble abode?" he asks as he pulls the rag off from around his mouth. When he rubs his jaw he feels fine stubble and mentally curses himself. You do not want to meet Mikasa looking scruffy. "Thought Arlert was your repairman."

"He was," Mikasa agrees, "until he got into R&D." Jean feels an envious twist in his stomach. Lucky little _shit_; getting to work in the Angels' R&D means Armin gets to work with Hanji, the foremost designer of anthroradiodynamic implants. In the pubs it is rumoured that she has replaced her brain with a hard drive with a capacity of one thousand yottabytes, and that she has a fully-functioning cybernetic dick. It's probably bullshit, since the woman (man? Who cares?) is, after all, an Angel. The Angels' R&D department mostly concentrate on weapon development nowadays. "In any case, my bike was getting to be beyond his capabilities, and I need the best." He brushes off the comment. Jean knows he's one of the best grease monkeys in Eden

"Marco tell you to come?" he asks bluntly, pushing a few rusty screwdrivers and some old takeaway boxes off his workbench.

"Course he did. You two have something going on? If so, is there any way I can get into the middle of that?" He chuckles to try and cover his blush, and when he looks up her smile is oddly maternal.

"You probably need to spend less time with Ymir." He fiddles with a control panel in the workbench and the hoverplate hums into life to deposit her bike in front of him.

"You're right," she admits, moving over to the bench. She braces her hands against it and taps a button on her bike, prompting a passcode input screen to come up. She enters it quickly and the fairing melts away to reveal the cycle's innards. It bears Armin's hallmarks, intricate detail and codes written into everything, pieces working perfectly by themselves but always having trouble functioning as a cohesive unit.

"Is this the Commandant's mainframe or a motorcycle?" he deadpans. Mikasa lets out an unladylike snort.

"Armin's just a little paranoid. I know all of 'em, though, don't worry." She drums her fingers against the subframe. "In any case, I need more speed and better braking. New armour, too."

Jean plugs his hand into the V-8 and thinks. Mikasa's bike is almost perfect already, but after a few moments' examination he can spot a few flaws. Along with many other small problems, there are big faults; the spark plugs are inefficient, the combustion chamber's capacity is too small, and the fairing needs to be reinforced if she's going to be up against the Titans.

The Titans are not a new threat. They were a small-time gang for a while with most of their fame being due to only accepting Enhanced, but have recently developed a new technology of crystallisation, given to them by the Commandant himself, enabling them to turn parts of their body into crystal almost as hard as diamond. Jean's seen results of this crystal; women with permanent jewels around their necks, bikes ripped open never to be repaired. The verb 'to be crystalled' has entered their vocabulary, meaning to lose your life to a shard of crystal.

"It'll cost you," he says finally.

"I got plenty of money."

He names his price, and she closes her eyes momentarily.

"Done." She pulls a wad of bills out of one of the many pockets in her white cargo pants and hands them to him far more easily than anyone giving someone else the equivalent of an average family's yearly salary should. He flips through the money easily and secretes it in a pocket; later, he'll stash it in the safe under his bed that only his specific arm can unlock.

He begins to say something he'll regret. "I shouldn't pry, but..."

"No, you shouldn't." The silence is tense, Mikasa's eyes reflecting his slightly luminescent ones; everyone who is Enhanced has so many energised ports in their brain that the light pierces through their retina and gives their eyes an ethereal glow. Jean is no different, and his brown eyes have a strange, catlike gold tint to them. Eventually, Mikasa breaks and looks away, gloved hands tugging her scarf up to hide her mouth. "I have to protect Eren," she explains, "and I can't do that with an average motorcycle."

Jean's heard of Eren; Marco's told him enough tales of his fierce determination that Jean dislikes him without having met him. What's tenacity worth when you have no talent to back it up? When he glances at Mikasa, her eyes are shuttered.

"Actually-" He moves over to the corner to grab Marco's fixed bike. "You mind taking Marco's bike back for me?"

She grabs the bike off him, runs her hands over the front cowl and settles them on the steering. "Sure." She throws it up on the hoverplate and walks it up the stairs. Even though he really doesn't need to, Jean follows.

Outside the light has lessened, going from sickly orange to rusty red. It dyes her bandages the colour of dried blood and casts a weak glare over the chrome of Marco's cycle.

"It'll be four days." He watches her clambering onto the motorcycle (Marco is a little taller than her and it shows) as he talks, the straps wrapped around her legs digging into her thighs.

"Three." Her eyes, screened by goggles, drill into him. He nods in assent, finding himself already unable to deny her.

And then she smiles – and it stops Jean's heart. She looks young, the years and cares falling away from her so he can see the carefree child she must have been once. The corners of her eyes crinkle, and she actually gets dimples. He could liken it to a ray of sun breaking through the clouds, but that is a phenomenon he has never observed in person, so instead he just says that that's the exact moment he falls in love with her.

When she leaves, the motorbike roaring beneath her like a tiger, he watches her back recede until it is a speck of brown amongst a world of gray. Only when his lungs begin to burn does he goes back in his bunker and fold himself into his bed, watching her bike like it's a bomb about to blow.

Jean believes that the way a bike works can say a lot about its owner. Did they pay for proper materials, or did they use scavenge? Did they build it themselves, or did they outsource it to a mechanic?

Working on Mikasa's bike pushes him to the limits of his ingenuity. He can almost see her psyche reflected in the carefully maintained engine, pistons pumping perfectly, in the sloppy paintjob. There's the even wear on the tires, there's the smoothness of the footpegs, perfectly curved to fit the sole of her boot.

He spends half a day yelling into a speaker as he removes the calliper to get to the rotor and tune it, trying to get nanorods that the Commandant hasn't claimed; he ends up pulling in a large favour from an old friend to actually get his paws on the fucking things. He goes a few days without eating or showering, too enraptured by the mechanisms of her motorbike to pay attention.

When he finally finishes it, it is an hour before she is scheduled to arrive, and the bike looks damn good; he even threw in a new paintjob. The fairing is the colour of her eyes, the seat the same shade as her scarf, and the rest is the bird-black of her hair. Besides being pretty, it is functional; the fairing has been reinforced with diamond nanorods and as such could probably stand up to a small atomic bomb. Red light glints through the wheel rims, mainly just for show, but it'll look pretty badass when she's actually riding it and the red light creates an afterimage. He can imagine Mikasa racing through the clogged arteries of Wall Maria with a crimson trail behind her.

Initially, he resolves to make himself presentable for Mikasa's visit, maybe put on a clean shirt, shave, all that nice stuff... but when he sits down after he realises that he's wrecked, exhaustion weighing him down like lead. He makes a valiant effort to get up, but a combination of gravity, lack of electricity and plain enervation pull him own into his bed. He manages to hook himself up to the outlets, but otherwise he just conks; he doesn't even take his boots off.

While he sleeps, he dreams of nothing.

When he awakes he's almost sure there's an earthquake, but it isn't; it's just Mikasa Ackerman, face pressed into the crook of his neck. He lets out a noise that's a cross between snore and screech and basically goes into mental shutdown. He stinks to high heaven and low hell and his boiler suit is covered in oil, but Mikasa is hugging him tight as a vice.

"Jean," she says breathily, words gusting by him in an exhale of hot air.

"Y-yeah?" His voice is shot, from not having used it all that much in the past three days and from pure anxiousness.

"You," she begins, "are a mechanical wizard!" She releases him and darts over to her bike. "I took it out already and... better than sex."

"I wouldn't go that far," he groans, swinging his legs out of bed and rubbing his face, hands rasping over three day's worth of stubble. When he gets a clear look at her he sees that Mikasa is wearing riding clothes, the curve of her waist bulky with armour under the bandages. Her helmet lies abandoned on the workbench. "How'd you get past the guns?"

"Marco told me the passcode." She picks up the helmet and cradles it in the crook of her arm, hip jutting out.

"'Course he did," Jean sighs and stands up, but not before disconnecting himself from the jacks. Mikasa's eyes follow the movement and the swing of the cables back to the wall. "You ridin' out today?"

She nods, fingering the boxes holstered at her thighs. They look innocent, but Jean knows they contain retractable blades with wickedly sharp edges. "Erwin thinks he knows a drop spot, so we're going to intercept the latest batch of Brigadiers and eliminate them before they get to the Titans." The line of her lips hardens. "You... might want to hide. Levi says it's gonna get bloody."

"When doesn't it?" He freezes, realising that the best time to criticise the bikers that tear Wall Maria apart is not while he's in a room with an Angel... but when he glances at Mikasa, her mouth is twisted in a way that makes him think she agrees.

"I'll come back afterwards for damage control," she says finally, slipping the helmet back onto her head; somehow her hair stays perfect. "Jean, I can't ever thank you enough."

The glass of her helmet does nothing to dim the smile in her eyes. He feels a blush creeping up onto his cheeks. "Eh, it was nothing," he mumbles.

Mikasa's gaze lingers on him maybe a few moments too long, but then she's up the stairs and out the door.

Fifteen minutes later the sirens sound. Tinny, corporate voices state tired warnings and constant precautions over the constant wail, piercing through even the thickest walls. Jean shoves earplugs into his ears and lies down, drifting above the edge of sleep.

Mostly, he worries about Marco, but now there's something small burning at the back of his mind that says _'Mikasa Mikasa Mikasa.'_

Eventually, he gets up and starts some older jobs; by the time the raid is over and relative silence has descended once again, he has fixed three microwaves and two radios. When Marco shoots in the door and almost faceplants down the stairs he's up to his elbows in a complicated safe. Marco thuds into his back and makes him cough.

"What you doin'?"

"Not mu- Wait, when did you get here?"

Marco wrinkles his noise, distorting the clusters of freckles spattered across his face. "Roughly 20 seconds ago. Oh! We won!" He pauses for a few moments and then adds; "Well, none of us died horribly. So we won!"

Jean swivels around. "How did she serve you?"

"Brilliant, as always!" Marco keels over backwards, helmet thunking against the ground. "Actually, I managed to skewer a few with those cool hook spring thingies, so they were a good idea."

"Knew they'd work." Jean falls backwards and lands beside Marco, Enhanced arm scraping against tan leather. "How'd everything else go?"

There's a hitch in Marco's breathing that tells him the news isn't good. "Annie, Bertholdt and Reiner got gassed, and so did a few others." His hand nudges against Jean's side. "Eren almost got taken out, and Mikasa went after him like she always does." Jean's heart contracts painfully at the mention of her name, and he's almost sure Marco notices. "Levi had to go get them, but his leg got done pretty bad in the process. Mikasa's kicking herself over it. She won't ever admit it, but she kinda looks up to him." Jean knows Levi; hell, the entire city knows Levi. The guy was the original young leader of the Angels, but he ceded leadership to Erwin about ten years ago, when the rogue government official almost killed him in a bike joust. Levi is second in command and highly dangerous, even though he's supposed to be incredibly short.

They lie on the floor and Marco tells him more bits and pieces, about how soulless the eyes of the Titans were and how much pain those afflicted by the gas had been in. Jean closes his eyes and lets Marco's words wash over him.

"I guess I gotta go back," Marco eventually sighs, straightening up with difficulty. "They'll have kittens if I'm not there at assembly."

"Go back to the orphanage," Jean says absently, fiddling with a scrap of steel in his pocket. Marco laughs as he jams his helmet back onto his head. Jean follows him outside with a load of electronics in a bag and waves him off. Night has fallen, and when Jean looks up he pretends he can see the stars past the fog.

After he dons his filter mask, he ambles down the street and delivers his finished repair jobs. He uses the money to buy food and beer, and when he gets back he takes a shower; hot water has never felt more welcome. When he emerges he intends to eat, drink and sleep and not wake up for a while, but when he's in the middle of his kao soi the alarms go off, alerting him to an intruder. When he looks at the little screen he gets a fuzzy image of Mikasa, eyes turned skyward. He hurriedly dials in the code to open the door, and it opens with a gust of stale air.

"Sorry to barge in," she exclaims as she stumbles in, and suddenly Jean remembers that he didn't bother to put a shirt on. "I just..." She thumps down besides the desk, back sliding against it.

"Was the bike okay?" he offers.

"Better than okay, it-" She stops suddenly, inhaling deeply. "It probably saved my life."

Jean abandons the food and crouches down beside her. "Is everything all right?" He feels blind, hands grasping for an invisible enemy.

"Yes, o-" Her eyes lock on to his and something in her breaks. "Oh, what's the fucking point of lying?" She yanks her helmet off roughly, hair sticking to her forehead. "I'm not okay. Levi's injured, Eren's _pissed_! I couldn't even protect him on my own, Levi had to help..." She presses her hands into her eyes.

Jean lets himself sit down beside her. "Marco told me."

"Marco tells you everything, doesn't he?" The words are muffled.

"I don't know," he admits, more to himself. "I don't know if I really know anything, but I do know that you do everything you can for Eren, and if he's pissed off with you because of that he needs to pull his head out of his ass." The words come out in a rush, Jean unable to stop the flow. Mikasa shocks back a little and looks at him properly. Her eyes are a little red around the edges, and tendrils of hair cling to her face. She's beautiful, even when she's falling apart.

"Can I stay here tonight?" He stares at her and her cheeks flood with colour. "No, not like that! I just... I need to get away from the Angels." Jean nods impulsively and she smiles in relief, the corners of her eyes crinkling. He stands up and Mikasa's eyes track his bare chest, pectorals stretching as he stretches an arm, and her gaze fastens on the slight glow within his chest.

"Well, if you're..." He motions towards his bed.

"Oh, no... I don't want to inconvenience you. I'll just..." She moves over and leans her back against the end of the bed; Jean sits down on the bed with his legs knocking against her arm. He feels like a faulty programme, freezing every few seconds just to stare at Mikasa, resplendent in civvies: a saggy jumper over leggings and shirt, and of course her scarf is tangled around her neck.

He shoves the Thai food at her, and she sniffs it warily. "Do you mind?" she asks, and he tosses her a fork. When she eats the first noodle she makes a face and Jean can't help but laugh at her, her cheeks all puffed out and her mouth puckered. After she swallows, she glares at him. "Armin doesn't make much spicy food, so... it kinda took me by surprise, okay?"

"Armin cooks? What else can he do, conjure bunnies?" She snorts at that, taking another mouthful.

"Armin can do everything except fight, but that's fine."

Jean's lucky he ordered at lot, because Mikasa ends up _really_ liking Thai.

The evening passes quickly; they drink lukewarm beer and don't talk all that much. Mikasa's too private and Jean is so tired he almost falls asleep, except he actually _does_, he has no idea when, but... he falls asleep.

He has a lucid dream, or at least he thinks it is; he hasn't dreamt since the arm. In it, Mikasa dumps a blanket on him, but doesn't move away. There's an unreadable emotion glittering in the steel of her eyes as she looks down at him, and her hand jerks out and presses into his chest. It moves up, over his chest, to his cheek, through his hair, and then she is gone, leaving only a tightness in the gears of his heart.

When he wakes up he's alone, but there's a fixed plasma torch on the bench.

Their friendship starts out flimsy, built on beer, food, and a safe place. They don't really talk; usually, Mikasa just curls up in the corner and watches him work. Eventually she joins in; at first she just hands him wrenches and the like, but Mikasa proves to be capable and soon Jean is teaching her the finer points of calibrating pressure gauges.

There's something fascinating about being friends with her, about coaxing her out of her self-made shell. He tells her little bits about his life, about Marco and engineering and stupid teenage alcohol-induced misadventures, mentally creating a path of breadcrumbs. In return she tells him things, stumbling anecdotes and tales cut short; within three months of camaraderie he has a full picture.

Mikasa lived with her immigrant parents in the slums of Wall Maria until the age of nine, when they were killed before her very eyes. Mikasa glosses over this but Jean gets the sense that there's a bigger story there; almost everyone in Eden can trace back to crazily mixed heritage, Alaskan and Polynesian and Sri Lankan and South African and many many more, so a pureblood like Mikasa would be very valuable to the barren noblewomen within Wall Sina who prise pureness above all else. The Jaegers adopted her, and she lived with them for two years in Shiganshina until a gang murdered Eren's mother; his father fled, she says, nails digging into her palms. Mikasa talks about being homeless, about having to take care of Eren, tortured by his mother's ghost, and Armin, young and weak and scared.

"We had to do something," she mutters, grabbing the ring of Allen keys. They are elbow-deep in a motorbike, in particular Erwin's. "We were helpless, but we knew how to ride a bike, so we reckoned motorcycles couldn't be much different." She pauses. "We were wrong."

Jean takes the Allen keys out of her grip, noting the red hexagonal marks on her hands.

"So Eren and I collected scrap, and Armin built us three bikes. They weren't pretty, or all that sturdy, but they functioned if you started them right. We challenged Levi to a joust. He told us we wouldn't be able for it, and he was right. Eren's right side got torn open, Armin was thrown off his bike and fell unconscious and I wasn't much better... but I knocked Levi down. We still lost though, so we retreated back to our alleyway. Eren was... I couldn't do anything." Her eyes darken, and her lips tremble. Her shoulders are slumped with the weight of old shame, and that alarms him; Mikasa always stands tall, shoulders squared, spine ramrod straight. Defiant, maybe.

So she clams up, despite Jean's best attempts; later, hands wiped clean of oil, passing a beer between them, she suddenly starts again. The words sputter out of her, like a raw artery still pumping blood. "When Erwin found out that we'd never actually ridden motorcycles before, he rushed straight down and searched through the slums to find us." She takes a swig of beer and passes it back to him. "I can still remember him... his hair was all mussed up, he was bright red in the face from having ran around so much, and his nice jacket was smeared and dirty, but right then he was a real angel to us. He offered us a place in the Angels of Liberty... The rest is history, I guess." Her fingers ghost unconsciously across an old scar on her cheek that he has never had the balls to ask about. "...But Levi still can't stand me." She smirks, oddly proud.

"Levi generally can't stand anyone, or at least, that's what Marco told me." He drains the bottle.

"Marco tells you everything."

"That's our deal," Jean says, wiping his mouth. "I fix his bike, he tells me shit." Mikasa shakes her head at him half-heartedly, a rare smile turning the corners of her mouth up. Jean manages not to stare at her like an idiot this time, but only barely. Around Mikasa he feels sickeningly in love, and it only gets worse by the day. The most horrible bit is knowing that she doesn't feel the same way; the way she says Eren's name, how her eyes soften when she mentions him... it hurts. His heart clenches up and he feels like vomiting. Love has never made him feel like this before.

"How did you two meet, in any case? Were you brought up together or something?" She tilts her head to the side, bird-bright eyes curious.

"Nah... We've only been friends about two years." He doesn't elaborate, getting up to throw the bottle away. Mikasa's gaze is heavy on his back.

"He's a good kid," she concedes. "Too good, maybe..."

"I wouldn't doubt Marco. I'd trust him with my life." The words are a little stilted, but Jean means them.

"I know."

Mikasa leaves shortly after, taking Erwin's bike with her, and Jean spends a while studying his hand, flexing it and watching how the wires work, how their glow under his skin intensifies and dims as his fingers straighten out.

Maybe he'll tell her later, but not now. Another time.

And sure enough, he does tell her, three weeks later in a run-down plaza in a somewhat nicer part of Wall Maria. It is nearing twilight, and if one could see the sky the sun would be beginning to set.

Jean hauls the bag of cheap parts behind him as he emerges from the hardware depot. Mikasa, seated on the edge of a plastic bench covered in graffiti, waves at him. When he falls into the seat beside her, bag clanking as he dumps it on the ground, she hands him a cup. He pushes his mask aside to drink it and makes a face when it hits his tongue; it is cold yet spicy, and Mikasa screws up her face back at him. When he does it, he looks mentally damaged, whereas when she does it she looks irritatingly cute.

"You're mean," he grouses petulantly, once he's swallowed.

She pouts at him and begins to say something, but she is interrupted, mouth hanging open behind the green-tinted plastic screen of her mask.

A little girl is standing in front of them, her threadbare teddy bear trailing in the dirt. Her eyes are large and blue, and her fair hair is tied up in wispy pigtails. "What's wrong?" he asks, after a few uncomfortable moments of silence. Mikasa has frozen up beside him, with only her eyes moving.

"Are you 'Hanced?" the little girl replies, eyes saucer-wide.

"Sure," he answers, unconsciously flexing his fingers. "You wanna see?" He is used to these kind of questions, but it's easier to deal with when its coming from a ragged little girl than it is when it's from flesh fanatics foaming at the mouth.

She nods mutely, and he extends his arm towards her. She drops the poor teddy to the ground in a puff of dust and her tiny hands reach for his. There's something resembling wonder in her eyes as she pokes the centre of his palm and squirms her stubby little fingers into the gaps between his metacarpals.

Some of the newer Enhancements are works of art, whether they are lifelike with synthetic skin and fine hair or mechanical marvels of chrome and plasma, but Jean's isn't. It looks like it is made of steel matchsticks, and the confluence of metal and flesh is ugly and scarred. The gold nerves wrap around the metal spokes of his radius and ulna, extend up under the skin of his arm, over his shoulder and through his neck until they finally connect to the ports embedded in his precentral gyrus.

Jean clenches his fist and the girls mouth drops into an 'o' when the glow of his nerves intensifies to a blinding glare. She claps her chubby hands, but Mikasa elbows him discreetly, and he notices the boy with eyes like the little girl's racing over to them, face twisted in disgust. He scoops up his sister and almost growls at Jean, his skinny shoulders hunched up. "Filthy cyborg!" he spits at him, and he runs off again as the little girl begins to wail. Jean becomes aware of all the condemning eyes driving into his, and suddenly notices that the only other Enhanced person in the plaza is a vagrant, luminous green eyes staring at an empty cup. Mikasa stands up, grasps his arm, and pulls him out of the plaza. She stomps along, feet falling heavily as Jean stumbles behind her. He can almost feel the anger rolling off her.

This kind of stuff doesn't infuriate him anymore, to be honest; he's gotten used to it, but it is still unpleasant, so Jean tries not to give others any opportunities to belittle him. That's why he hides in his shop; it is safe in there, away from judging eyes and critical strangers.

Eventually, Mikasa's gait slows from run to stride to stroll, and finally she grinds to a halt. They're outside a weapons shop, neon light gleaming on the blades of katanas and claymores. An old man dozes behind the counter, one half of his face scarred and disfigured. Traditional music crackles from a distant radio.

"Mikasa?" he tries, placing a hand on her shoulder. Her head sags forward to reveal the smooth nape of her neck, and his throat dries out.

"What gives them the right to treat you like that?" she wonders aloud, shoving her hands in her pockets.

"That's not the worst I've gotten," he admits, going to slump against a wall. He's aiming for self-deprecating, blowing it off Marco-style, but he fails horribly, judging from Mikasa's face.

"See, even that you just said that, it shows-ugh." Her eyes drift to his chest, to his heart.

"Tell me," she states, moments later.

"It's a long story."

"I got plenty of time for you." That simple statement breaks his resolve, and after examining her open face, he begins.

"I used to be a Brigadier, you know." Her eyes widen, but he understands. He isn't exactly a military kind of person. "My father was one, and his father before, so it was expected of me, I guess. I was eighteen when I left Rose for Sina and joined up. I hadn't even kissed a girl, but there I was with a bunch of other middle-class sons, wide eyed and ready to save the city. I did well, all things considered; I excelled at strategy and, of course, mechanics."

Mikasa is rapt. The light is fading slowly, draining her skin of colour.

"I was nineteen, I think, when they took my heart. Do you know Marshall Wahner? Pretty fat? Pitiful moustache?" She nods jerkily. "Well, around that time he went into cardiac arrest; not much of a surprise, given that he drank like a fish. But they told him they needed a new heart. He could have got a cybernetic one, but he's one of those flesh fanatics... you know the type. 'Blood is thicker than battery acid!'" He snorts. "Ignorant little shits."

"And he..." Mikasa's voice is shaky.

"I was young, I was healthy, and most importantly, I didn't matter; my dad was a shit soldier. So one day they brought me into a head office and broke the news. They told me I'd be paid extra for a year, but I didn't care, I just wanted to serve. So I did." He breathes in, noxious air stinging his throat. He needs a new mask. "They took out my heart, gave it to him, and replaced it with a cybernetic organ worth as much as a Wall Sina chalet. Luckily enough, it took, and I became the poster boy of the cardioprosthetics department." His voice is hoarse; he hasn't talked at length like this for a while. Something about Mikasa quiets him, forces the flow of words to stop so he can think.

"I was honourably discharged the following year. I was at the head of a platoon going into a drugs bust, and it went really horribly wrong. I was lucky to get out with just my arm missing; a lot of guys died." He stays silent for a few seconds, and then, in answer to her unspoken query; "They had these rotary blade sword things, like a mini lawn mower. My arm got caught in one." Her face twists in sympathetic pain. "So they amputated my forearm, gave me a ticket and there I was, dumped on the streets with too much money and no idea where to start." He averts his gaze from her. He can't look into her eyes while he tells her the next bit.

"I lost myself for a while. I did all l the things I had never had a chance to do; drink, drugs, girls... I was a regular degenerate. My family even disowned me. One day, though, I snapped out of it. Almost all my money was gone, I was living in a burned down shack, and worst of all I had been hospitalised for alcohol poisoning... I think it was how I saw others looking at me. They pitied me, but they were disgusted by me as well. So I made a resolution; I would make something of myself. I would succeed, and I would survive, and then they wouldn't fucking pity me, would they?"

"I decided to become a mechanic; I'd always liked it back in the Brigades. I started up my own shop with what funds I had left, and I made a name for myself soon enough. People called me 'One-Arm Joe', you know?" That gets a laugh out of her. "One day, though, a kid walked into my shop. Freckles all over the place, big nervous smile... he showed me a bike, and when I had a look at it I asked him 'Does anyone have a grudge against you?' 'No, why?' he said, and I told him 'Well, it looks like a madman made this bike.' He burst out laughing, and I suppose it was right then that me and Marco became friends." He finds himself smiling involuntarily. "So I rebuilt his bike, and then he got into a street race with a few Angels and pretty much shattered the competition. He got his jacket, and the rest is history."

"But your arm?" Mikasa prompts. During the course of his speech she has sidled up beside him, hip pressing into his leg. Being this close to her is more than a little dizzying.

"Once he'd saved up enough, Marco brought me to a biomedical engineer and paid him to give me a new arm. The guy was wary, which was understandable since dual cybernetic implants are generally regarded as risky, but Marco managed to persuade him. The ports were already there for him so it was easier than expected, and he even threw in interchangeable parts for my phalanges. Basically, my hand is a power tool." He wiggles his fingers at her. "And here I am now... and for once in my life, I'm content." There's something strange in her eyes when he looks at her, something human. He's so used to her apathy and to her perfection that seeing her like this makes him feels strange, like his insides are twisting.

Out of nowhere, she hugs him. Her arms are fastened around his chest, face pressed into his neck, and Jean lets out a pathetic little yelp.

"M-Mikasa, what are you-?"

"Shut up and let me hug you."

He acquiesces easily, and after a few halting seconds, lifts up his arms to hug her back. Mikasa is all muscle, strong and wiry and wide, but her body melds into his perfectly. His hands are huge against the bandages wrapped around her back.

"Jean," she breathes, fingers digging into his spine.

"Y-yeah?" He's getting the strangest sense of déjà vu.

"...Thank you."

They stand there entwined for another mute or two. The light is really truly gone now. When Mikasa releases him she stills, and almost makes a movement to hug him again, but she barely restrains herself. He can see the leonine yellow glow of his eyes reflected in hers.

She leaves then, without a word. Jean's legs give out and he slides to the ground, back rasping against the dirty concrete of the wall.

He wonders if people will ever stop leaving.

It happens when they're working on her bike. It's probably a foregone conclusion, or at least it is according to Marco.

It's one of those hot, sticky days and even though Jean has the fans on full blast he feels like he's being baked in his own skin like a metaphorical potato. The metal of his arm is getting unbearably hot, and it sears the skin of his elbow. Seeing as it is around 4000 degrees Kelvin Jean has shed all his clothes except the bare essentials, and Mikasa has done the same, so he's mixed up his screwdriver heads about fourteen times now, too distracted by the curve of Mikasa's chest under her sports bra to think straight.

Mikasa is tightening a nut onto a bolt, but the wrench slips out of her sweaty hands, and she swears and thumps her fist against the desk. Jean glances at her sideways, not trusting himself to look at her head-on for fear of getting noticed ogling her. Mikasa gives him a half-hearted glare, but her eyes aren't totally focused, and her gaze slips down from his eyes and past his chest to his abdomen and the trail of hair down from his navel. Mikasa bites her lip and it takes a lot for him to stand there silently, to not grab her and kiss her until she sees stars.

Jean's had girls before, obviously; he's run the gamut of crushes and flings and messy break-ups, but Mikasa makes him feel completely different. It is attraction on an entirely distinct plane; not just her body, but herself, her mind and her thoughts and wants and fears - Jean just wants to know her, know all of her.

So when she takes his face in her hands, thumbs digging into the underside of his jaw, he doesn't resist. She breathes in to steady herself, eyes sliding shut-

And then she kisses him.

It is every bit as good as he had expected. Maybe better, but Mikasa pulls away too quickly for him to even begin to think of a worthy metaphor.

"Is this okay?" She looks incredibly nervous, chewing her lip. "I mean, you might not want to do this, I might be forcing myself on you-"

"I don't think I'll ever not want... not want you." Jean's voice isn't cooperating with him, but Mikasa doesn't seem to care because she kisses him again, and this time properly, her mouth opening against his; his legs almost give out. She's pressed completely into him, hands moving from his face to tangle in his hair, one leg trapped between both of hers. Jean's hands grip her waist, but he realises, maybe too late, that his Enhanced hand might be hurting her, so he removes it and clenches it behind his back. Mikasa moans into his lips and pulls away from him again. One of her hands leaves his hair and moves behind his back to clasp his mechanical hand. The warmth of her skin feels strange against the cool metal of his.

"What-?"

"You idiot... This is part of you, and I want all of you, so stop being stupid...!" Her head falls forward onto his shoulder. "It's hard to form sentences around you when you're mostly naked, you know that?"

"The feeling's mutual," he says simply, brushing her hair away from her forehead. "Can we get back to...?"

"Thought you were never going to ask." She grabs both his hands and kisses him yet again, and this time they don't get interrupted.

One thing: Jean finally finds a use for his hand's 'vibrate' function.

Afterwards, tangled together so that they can't tell where one begins and the other ends, Mikasa fiddles with the little control panel in his chest. It pops open and her eyes widen with wonder, reflecting the yellow blaze of his heart.

"If you put in a certain code, it shuts it down entirely." She peers up at him, a small smile playing on her lips.

"I'm never going to let you die, you know that? Especially not after _that_." She makes a crude motion with her hands and he grins lazily, twining his fingers with hers.

Right there in that moment with Mikasa in his arms, Jean thinks that if he died now, he'd die completely happy.

But even in their moments of bliss, there are downsides. Raids grow more and more frequent, Marco and Mikasa come back looking steadily more battered and bruised, and worst of all, some Angels become... infected.

It is a public secret that the Titans are the Commandant's last ditch attempt to stop the biker gangs once and for all. The Titans, who used to be a rag-tag band of bikers formed by frantic and shunned Enhanced, have now become are genetically modified super soldiers, their genome rewritten to make monsters. The Angels had been beginning to fight against the Titans, even putting a few out of commission, but recently the Titans had been gassing them. Nobody thought much it to begin with; it was tear gas, temporarily incapacitating but not anything to worry about once you put a mask on...

Except it wasn't.

People who have come into close contact with the gas, whether they were wearing a mask or not, are beginning to mutate. It starts with nausea, which becomes severe sickness, which progresses to temporary unconsciousness, and finally waking.

As a Titan.

This is called shifting, and the Angels have lost almost a quarter of their manpower. Mikasa has retreated back into her shell; she is worrying about Eren, who has been hit with the gas too many ties to count.

"What if he shifts?" she says one day, lost in some memory. Mikasa has become careworn, so weighed down with worries that Jean almost thinks he can see through her ashen skin. "What do I do then?" Her voice is dangerously close to breaking.

His hand finds her shoulder. He has no answer.

Marco is the only one unaffected by the whole crisis, still bouncing into the workshop with the sheer optimism of a dim Golden Retriever, no matter how badly wounded he is. On this particular occasion there was an expedition last night. He hasn't seen Mikasa yet, but isn't all that worried; she can handle herself.

"How do you do that?" Jean wonders aloud, messing with a carburettor. Marco gives him a confused look. "Stay cheerful all the time."

"Somebody's gotta do it." That shuts Jean up. Marco lets out a sigh and lies back. There's an ugly gash just above his right eye, bisecting his eyebrow. "Erwin says this expedition tomorrow is gonna be all or nothing. None of us are allowed to drink or anything tonight. I'm only out now because he gave us leave to say goodbye to our loved ones..."

Jean states wearily, "Cleaning wire." Marco tosses it over and Jean catches it deftly, adding; "What's the POA?"

"Classified!" Marco taps the side of his nose. Jean eyes him weirdly, and Marco beams radiantly back at him. "Just kidding. We're hoping to pen them around here, because apparently the Commandant's overseeing a drop here in Trost... how we found out, I dunno."

Jean rubs the back of his neck. "Doesn't sound great." Nothing about the sting sounds good. The Commandant overseeing a drop is highly unlikely, and on the off-chance that it is true he will be surrounded by the Brigade's elite, well-trained and armed to the teeth. The Angels have little to no chance of winning. Surviving, maybe, but doubtlessly with many casualties.

"Erwin-he's-" Marco inhales raggedly. "He's desperate. We have nothing else. This is our last chance. Even if it's a trap, we have to trigger it."

"Cut the leg to save the body." The words are sour in his mouth.

Marco nods, the corner of his mouth twisting into a frown. Something cold runs down Jean's spine; Marco never frowns, ever. As Jean opens his mouth, Marco's communicator sounds shrilly. Marco fumbles with it and reads the message quickly. "They're recalling us," he mumbles, standing up carefully. "I guess Erwin has another rousing speech for Levi to roll his eyes at." Something in Jean's stomach drops, and it feels like his heart has changed to lead.

Jean leaves his tools and walks beside Marco on his way out.

"Marco."

"Yeah?" His best friend is silhouetted by the light like some strange angel.

"Don't freak out." Jean grabs his friend into a hug, which starts out all elbows and boyish wrestling, but Marco calms down quickly.

"I'm taller than you!" Marco sniggers.

"Fina-fuckin-lly." Jean claps his back and lets him go. "Only took you, what, two years?"

"...What was that for?" Marco asks, straightening his jacket prissily.

"I dunno," Jean admits, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Can't a guy hug his best friend?"

"Course he can!" A thoughtful expression crosses Marco's face and he adds, "No homo."

"Full homo," Jean says drily.

"Full homo," Marco agrees.

They stand around like gormless crackpots for a few seconds, staring a little awkwardly at each other. Jean wonders if he knows the positions of Marco's freckles off by heart; he probably does, sadsack that he is.

"What are you doing?" Jean says finally. "Get off my property." Marco laughs properly and leaves him, bike roaring madly as its rider revs the engine wildly and abuses the throttle. Typical Marco.

Jean will never forget that image; Marco surrounded by a blazing halo of light, wings in full flight upon his back. Later, in his fevered nightmares, the wings will be real, one cobalt-blue and the other paper-white, wide as a smile.

The next day, Jean sleeps in. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't nervous; the worry gnaws at his stomach and send shivers of nausea up and down his throat. The mission has already started, with bikers concealed in cover around various parts of Trost, and in his mind's eye he can see Marco, fidgeting with anxiety, and Mikasa, still as death. The Special Operations Squad is apparently leading point, Levi and his deadly blades along with them. Armin and Hanji and co. are supposed to be doing aerial reconnaissance, which will later become aerial attack if the situation becomes bad enough (Jean's seen the bombs, even worked on a few, and he can say with absolute certainty that they are deadly), and only God knows where Erwin is. Probably in the thick of it. Nobody would ever call him an armchair leader.

Soon enough, the alarms start. Theoretically, he shouldn't be worried; the Angels are able to care for themselves, especially Marco and Mikasa, but there's something wrong with the whole situation. His arm refuses to work several times, digits lagging as he tries to move them and his heart is beating irregularly; twenty horrifying seconds it stops altogether. Afterwards he goes to puke, but he can't, since he hasn't eaten yet, and has no desire to do so in the foreseeable future.

Soon after, the bombs begin to fall. He falls into feverish sleep, security system set to maximum awareness; he feels sorry for any mice that try to flee to his doorstep, since they'll be blasted to smithereens.

Strangest of all; when he sleeps, he actually dreams. He hasn't done this in over two years.

It is of his mother. He's doing his homework in the kitchen, stylus flying across a tablet, and his little sister is over in the corner banging a doll against the wall and watching its head regenerate with childish glee. Maman is sitting beside him, watching him work; she is illiterate, and will never be able to make out the words he writes. In the women of the nobility being illiterate is prised because it means that you don't need to manage your own accounts and business, that you're rich enough to have someone to do that for you, or you have it all computerised. Jean's family is hardly noble, but they're somewhat well off, and a eunuch in Papa's employ manages their books.

"Jeanie?"

"Yes, Maman?" He doesn't know why he has to call his mother that, but she claims it is a remnant of their past culture. He just thinks it's stupid.

"You make me so proud, you know that?" The words hit him like ice water. Maman hardly ever talks, and if she does it is in displeasure. "Such a clever boy..."

He looks at his mother with dawning dread, but it isn't Maman; her honey coloured eyes are darkening to wood brown, her hair is short and choppy instead of immaculately coiffed, and her cheeks are scattered with freckles.

Well, cheek, because half of her –no, his– body is gone.

"Marco?" he chokes, not in the high pitch of his eight year old self but in his current voice, and the body slumps onto him. Jean screams and drops him; Marco's eyes are blackened with rot, his inner organs impaling themselves on the ugly brown spears of his ribcage. He thumps into a field of flowers that Jean has never seen the like of before, white petals dancing around him. The flowers begin to climb over Marco's body, trailing over and filling in the holes in him, and Jean stumbles back involuntarily. His boots are ruined with scarlet pollen, and the same goes for his old military uniform; the familiarly constricting collar of the shirt is almost comforting.

He doesn't have time to consider why the hell he's actually wearing it because he hears a shriek, and he looks up so quickly his neck cricks. There's a shadow in the distance and it solidifies as he stares, and when he can finally make it out, he can see a small, frail little girl thrashing around in a man's arms. She begins to let out a cry of help but the man hits her square in her face, crushing her delicate nose.

"Mikasa!" he cries, and begins to run, or at least tries to. The flowers have grown up his legs, tangling with his belts, pulling him back. Mikasa recedes in the distance, hand stretched out o him in vain, and he reaches out himself as the flowers twine around his neck. For a second he is whole and perfect, all flesh and blood with no steel substitutes, but the illusion breaks; he has no arm and no heart and he collapses. The perfume of the flowers is sickening, and they pull him inexorably towards Marco. When he is nose to nose with his dead best friend, the flowers force their mouths open and-

He wakes up. He doesn't jolt out of bed or anything, just lies there, heart pounding reassuringly in his ears. He is covered with cold sweat, and eventually his breathing evens out. _"It was just a dream," _he tells himself. _"Nothing more."_ The sirens are still wailing, but he definitely won't sleep after that so he gets up and start to work, this time an airbox that hasn't been pressurising properly.

At least it distracts him.

Hours later, the sirens stop. The silence is deafening.

The roar of bikes rolls around him like thunder, and he drops his tools and stands up. The air feels heavy, and his hands seize up; instinct nags at the edges of his mind, telling him that something is wrong, that's there is some kind of disturbance in his little universe-

And then the door bangs open.

At first all he sees is Mikasa, alive, and his heart jumps. She's injured –her hair is sticking to her forehead with blood- but then his eyes fall to her arms.

She is holding a body. There's something not right with it, the proportions are off, it's lopsided, but then she lays it on the workbench and he sees.

It's Marco. His skull is cracked down the middle, bloody gouges emanating out from the visceral wound, and shards of jagged green plastic spear his cheeks and jaw. His smile is split in half, fractured teeth falling out, but the injury doesn't stop there; it continues, down his left side to his waist, arteries trailing out of him like wires. The exposed marrow of his bones is already beginning to blacken. Marcos' eyes are still open, brown irises reflecting the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. His freckles have been blotted out by liberal splashes of blood.

(A half-remembered memory floats up to the top of his mind of Marco, leaning over him during his recovery from his arm op. His fingers dig into his biceps, and worry shines out of his dark eyes. "You'll be okay, right?" Marco says aloud, and then he drops his head onto Jean's chest to listen to the irregular beat of his heart. "You'll be fine...")

Nausea rises in Jean's throat, and he lurches forward, hands thudding into the side of the bench. _"No, no, no, no no no!"_ his mind chants at him. _"It's a dream, it's a dream..."_

But when Mikasa's hand fastens around his wrist, her grip is all too real. He looks up at her and stares.

"How?" He doesn't sound right, voice thick and unnatural.

"Annie." Mikasa's eyes are madman-bright, reflecting the artificial glow of his own. "She's a Titan. She took..."

"Eren..." Annie... he thinks he knows her. Glacial, blonde, devastatingly powerful. Friends with the two tall boys, Bertholdt and Reiner. Mikasa bears some resentment toward her because of an incident involving Eren, and as far as Jean can remember, she wasn't well-loved in general. "The bike?" Jean straightens up, fingers fisting in the blood-soaked leather of Marco's jacket.

"Outside." She's crying, but out of grief, he realises; out of fury.

Jean pulls his friend's jacket carefully off his body; miraculously, unlike its previous wearer, it is whole. He pulls it on; it's a little too tight and a little too long, but he isn't wearing it to make a fashion statement.

"Marco..." He grabs his hand. "I'll... I'll fight for you." His head snaps forward, neck unable to hold it up, but he rights himself momentarily. His breathing is coming hard and fast, erratic gulps of air inflating his lungs irregularly. Jean raises his hand to Marco's face, and slides his eyelids shut.

"Come on." He grabs Mikasa's hand and doesn't look back as he gets out. He knows his grip is too tight, but he can't stop himself; the anger is beginning to burn in him, a hot blaze that sets his blood aflame. He can't remember the last time he got angry like this, but it feels good, like the heat of it is burning his inhibitions to cinders.

For the first time, Jean gets onto Marco's bike. He knows this motorcycle inside out, from the pattern of the tyre treads to the curve of the fender. Mikasa throws him a helmet and he pulls it on; instantly his view of the world is tinted green. There are maps and diagrams and vital statistics hovering in front of his eyes; the filter attaches itself to his mouth and he inhales deeply.

He doesn't wait for Mikasa. He sets off.

He doesn't remember much of the ride itself, only vague impressions; the rush of adrenaline, the thrum of the bike between his legs, the blur of streetlights, the humming of Mikasa's cycle beside him, the roar of anger in his ears and the glare of fury in his eyes.

The neutral voice of the Angel AI instructs him where to go; the gridlines of the map show him where the other Angels are, Mikasa's dot trailing after him. But he doesn't need that to tell him they've arrived when the buildings around him begin to look steadily more dilapidated, and the sound of humans is replaced by the rumble of firebombs. One goes off a block over, and the force of it is strong enough to make him wobble.

Mikasa pulls up beside him. "We're close," she observes, eyes taking on a red cast from the glare of the fire surrounding them. He looks at her, but can't find it in him to care. All he wants to do is kill the girl who took his friend. It's a simple, ancient equation of friendship, loss and revenge with no room for any woman, no matter how much he loves her.

Jean swerves to halt past a knot of Angels, motorbikes stopped but engines still going; Eren is there on the edges, badly wounded but safe, Ymir and Christa flanking him. He can see Connie and Sasha among the bikers, swords primed and pointed toward the girl in the centre. Annie, with her regal nose high in the air and her hair falling out of its tie, is the centre of attention, and when Jean's eyes meet hers the blue of her eyes grows feverishly bright. There is a crack and Annie's arm turns to crystal; she thrusts it at a few unprepared Angels and impales them. She shakes them off her makeshift lance and races off though the scattered Angels. Jean plunges through them in pursuit, not even caring if Mikasa is with him; all he wants is vengeance.

Annie is laughing when he catches up to her, a high, girlish giggle totally at odds with her blood-spattered face. "Grease Monkey! Come here to save the day?" A crystal spear flies towards him, but he dodges it easily. "Give up. What kind of cripple can hope to beat a Titan?" The rumble of fury in his ears is almost unbearable.

"This one," he growls, and pulls on a lever to make weapons slide out of a hidden compartment. He draws the gun first, a modified Walther that fires electromagnetically charged bullets. He fires off a shot and it clips Annie's bike; the electricity arcs through it and through her, but she grits her teeth and does a crazy u-turn that brings her straight past him. He fires again, but it is too hurried and he misses by a mile, and while he's occupied Annie crystallises her arm and sticks him in the side. The wound is glancing yet the pain is blinding and he wobbles alarmingly, but straightens up and follows her again.

"Don't you fucking think I'll let you get away!" he roars, voice breaking halfway through. Annie laughs shrilly and speeds up; Jean pushes the throttle as far as he can and follows her, firing bullets at her. The electricity wracks her body and fries her bike and she hisses angrily as she shatters her crystal arms, shard of the glasslike crystal nicking his arms. Her bike starts to slow, unable to take the EMP pulses from the bullets and he switches out for a sword as he pulls up beside her. In response, Annie quickly crystallises her arms and begins to swipe at him.

He doesn't know how he keeps his balance but he does, slashing and stabbing rapidly, military training returning in bits and pieces of half-remembered instructions and quelled instincts. Annie hits him once but the blow lands on his Enhanced arm, and all she does is get tangled in wires; Jean shoves her off and takes the opportunity to ram her. She flies off the bike, but he follows her and the motorbikes tangle around him as he falls heavily, head cracking against the ground. He lies there struggling and kicking, blood trickling into his mouth, until Annie looms over him.

"Useless," she whispers, kicking him in the ribs. He can't get up, limbs trapped beneath steel and rubber. The clamour of anger in his ears has been replaced by a high pitched ringing noise like an alarm that will never stop. Above him Annie smiles, showing perfectly white teeth. "I thought you'd give me a fight... I suppose I shouldn't have trusted Ackerman to give me a proper impression of you." He tries to talk, to ask her why, but Annie stomps on his chest and he can feel his ribs shattering, piercing his lungs. "Now... join your friend!" She positions the jagged piece of crystal above his heart and begins to move, but there's an explosion, and as Annie staggers the detritus shifts, freeing Jean. He stands up as fast as he can, head rushing.

"No!" He leaps at her and they land heavily on the ground in a tangle of bodies. Annie is a skilled fighter but she's heavily wounded and her movements are erratic with desperation. Jean uses his arm to his advantage, plunging the metal spokes of his fingers into her side and tearing away a chunk of flesh; she screeches brokenly and knees him in the chest, managing to wrap her hands around his throat, but Jean keeps going, punching and jabbing her where he knows it hurts. He drags her hands away from his throat and shoves her wrists into the dirt above her head. "Why?!" he bellows. "Why did you kill him?! He...!"

"He was in the way." Annie's voice is husky and unnatural, words lilting where they shouldn't. "Collateral damage. He didn't matter. I suppose he died in vain." All of a sudden the grief hits him heavily, impacting his shoulders and Annie takes the opportunity his momentary weakness presents to push him away, stand up, and run off. Jean limps after her as fast as he can but he trips and falls to the dirt, helmet rolling off. Annie is a few metres away, unmoving; her hair is loose around her shoulders, and her jacket is torn to shreds. One arm hangs limply at her side, and her chest is stained heavily with blood. He can smell the stink of death off her, and he knows she won't last long, not in this state; for all intents and purposes, she is dead.

She sighs, and presses a hand to her heart. "I... didn't think it would come to this. Bertl, Reiner... I'm sorry."

The craziest thing happens; Annie begins to glow. She rises slightly into the air, the toes of her boots dragging in the dirt. Jean fumbles for his holstered gun and pulls it out as Annie begins to crystallise; it starts at her feet and hands, creeping in toward her centre. Jean manages to get off a shot but only when it is too late, and the bullet thumps uselessly into the glass of her forehead. Annie's crystal coffin thumps to the ground moments later and Jean manages to crawl over to it. When he touches the crystal it is warm, and when he looks at Annie's face, she is smiling.

They find him ten minutes later, crouched over the crystal, banging on it uselessly. His knuckles are torn open, blood on one hand and battery acid on the other.

They burn Marco's body three days later, along with all the others who died in the Battle of Trost. He didn't know them, but almost every single Angel is present, watching the flames flicker as they consume the bodies of their fallen comrades. Mikasa is beside him, knuckles just barely brushing against his, and Armin is at his other side, shoulders shaking. Eren is standing beside Mikasa, but he can't see his face.

Erwin gives a short speech that Jean doesn't listen to. When he finishes most people move off to go back to their own lives, to tend to their wounded and fix their motorcycles. Armin leaves quickly, voice thick with tears and Eren does too, muttering a quiet apology. He's probably off to stand guard over Annie's crystal, since that's all he's been doing these past few days.

"Kirschtein?" Mikasa takes his hand in hers as they turn around to face the speaker. Erwin stands before them, Levi and Hanji flanking him.

"Sir." Mikasa bows her head slightly. Jean doesn't do anything, and just stares as Levi glares at him, mouth twisted in a scowl.

"You probably already know what I'm here for, but I'll say it anyways. Jean Kirschtein, we want you to join the Angels of Liberty."

Mikasa's fingers tighten around his. Hanji isn't smiling for once, mouth pressed into a line of worry. Her eyes keep darting to his Enhanced arm, banged up and rusted as it is.

"Sure." His voice is rough from disuse. "On one condition..." Erwin inclines his head slightly. "No more ban on the Enhanced. If I can join, all of us can join." Hanji actually smiles at him, brown eyes bright.

"Of course." Levi rolls his eyes as Erwin speaks. "We'd be glad to." He clears his throat. "Now, if you'll excuse us..." Erwin leaves, Hanji tailing him; Levi stays behind and gives Jean a look that's probably supposed to be intimidating, but he matches him glare for glare. Finally Levi smirks, and after glancing thoughtfully at Mikasa, leaves.

Mikasa exhales and grasps Jean's other hand. The heat of the pyre is warm on his back as she looks up, eyes unreadable.

"Are you sure?"

Jean pulls her hands up to his chest. "I... I am. I don't want to hide... I don't be safe anymore. I want to help you."

Her mouth twitches in a half-smile. "Good." She lets go of his hands to slide her arms around him in an embrace. "I need you here."

There in Mikasa's arms Jean lets himself grieve, lets himself cry. The grief is choking, sucking the air from his lungs as he sobs, breath coming in half-gasps, and his cathartic tears stain her shoulder. Crying is better than the anger was. Mikasa's grip on him tightens as she presses a kiss to his neck, and her hands rub circles into his back.

The tears stop minutes later; in an uncharacteristically gentle move, Mikasa rubs the last of them away with the pads of her thumbs. She bites her lip as her hands frame his jaw.

"Okay?"

He gives her a half-hearted smile, and she pulls him away from the fire.

He isn't okay, not yet. It'll take a while, but all wounds heal, given time. Mikasa's fingers twine with his metal ones, and he thinks that maybe, in the end, it will all be okay.

For the first time in five years, he lets himself hope.


	5. cold hands, warm heart

**Jeankasa Week Day 5: Secret**

**Title:** cold hands, warm heart  
**Rating:** T**  
Fandom:** Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan  
**Characters:** Mikasa Ackerman, Jean Kirschtein, Jeankasa  
**Summary:** He's always there to warm her up.  
**Notes:** I just can't do smut.

* * *

Squad Levi's base is dark, with the only light coming from the moon outside. It's a chilly, cloudy night, and windy enough that her hair resembles a rat's nest when she gets in. It is a relief to get indoors, where the fires have been burning all day in an attempt to ward off the chill.

Mikasa creeps in the door silently, casting her eyes about for signs of life. There are none. Everyone else has probably been in bed for a long, long time.

She pads down the hallway, counting doors until she reaches the right one. She pushes on it carefully, peeking inside to check if she's in the right place; she doesn't want to end up in Connie's bed. Her heart leaps irregularly when she sees him, curled up under several blankets. Only the top of his head is visible, hair drained of blond colour by the shadows to turn it an ashy grey.

She slips inside the door and closes it behind her as gently as possible. The others are next door, and she really doesn't want to wake them. She pulls off her boots swiftly, depositing them in an inconspicuous corner, and her coat, scarf, shirt and pants follow them quickly until she is almost naked, with only her bandages and shorts keeping her decent. The chill air bites at her exposed flesh and raises mountain ranges of goose bumps along her forearms until she pulls on his shirt and boxers. They're a little too long, but otherwise they fit her fine. Mikasa has shoulders broad enough to match any man.

When she slips into his bed it is warm, and she lets out an involuntary sigh of relief. Jean squirms beside her, eyebrows knitting together. He wakes up with a splutter when she presses her cold hands against his cheeks.

"Wh- when did you come in? Why did you wake me up?" The words are muffled endearingly by sleepiness.

"Just now... I wanted company." He huffs as he wraps his arm around her shoulders and draws her closer to him, and she smiles to herself.

"Jeez..." She presses her nose into his shoulder, and he runs his hands down her back. "You're freezing. Were you wearing a coat?"

"Yes, mom." She slides her cold hands up to his stomach and he chokes.

"You're cruel and unusual, you know that?" She hooks her leg over his hip in response.

"Isn't that why you picked me?" His hands, resting at her waist, drop lower to her hips, and instead of answering presses a kiss to her lips, pulling away before Mikasa can get into the swing of things.

"Go to bed." She pouts at him.

"See, now you're being cruel and unusual." She kisses him again and flips him over so that she's straddling him. His hands slacken. "I wanna warm up."

"What am I, a human hot water bottle?" He bites her bottom lip and she whimpers into his mouth. Her brain always melts when he does that.

"A human hot water bottle who is really good at kissing." Her hands press into his sternum, tracing the ridges of scar tissue.

"I should put that on my CV." He shifts below her, and hot jolts run up through her thighs. He always makes her feel like a clumsy, inexperienced fifteen year-old deep in the first throes of love, which is incredibly irritating.

"We're in the military, you moron. We don't have CVs." Her voice cracks as his hands run up her waist to her chest.

"Well, if you ever want to do one, I'll be a referee." He puts on a stupid falsetto voice. "Mikasa Ackerman is a dedicated worker with a very skilled tongue and- Hey!" Her fingers fist in his hair and yank on his head.

"Be quiet, or you won't get any more of that tongue."

"Hmm..." He pulls her down and kisses her again, more passionately this time. When he pulls away, breathless, he has the audacity to smirk at her. "Nope, still there."

She sighs shakily. "You're..."

"Amazing? Sexy? Exhausted? Hurt?"

"Hurt?" She pokes around his body, and he winces when her hands dig into his shoulder. "What happened?"

"I fell off a horse." He looks so sheepish, biting his lip and screwing his nose up. She can't concentrate when he does that, and he knows it.

"You should have told me..." She rolls off him reluctantly, missing the friction between their bodies.

"Why would I stop you? I won't ever refuse you anything." He pulls her closer, and she snuggles into his chest.

"You shouldn't say things like that... You'll end up on your back again."

"There's nowhere I'd rather be." He pauses. "Except maybe on top."

"On your birthday, if you're good." He laughs into her hair.

He falls asleep quickly enough after that; Jean has always been a heavy sleeper. For Mikasa, it takes longer. She always finds it hard to fall asleep beside him, worried that if she falls asleep the dream will end, and when she wakes up her bed will be empty.

"Good night," she mumbles, when her consciousness finally begins to fade. "I..."

She doesn't finish her sentence, but it doesn't matter. He already knows, even if no-one else does.


	6. fuckin n00b

**Jeankasa Week Day 6: Bedroom**

**Title:** fuckin n00b  
**Rating:** T**  
Fandom:** Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan  
**Characters:** Jean Kirschtein, Mikasa Ackerman, Marco Bodt, Scouting Legion, Jeankasa  
**Summary:** High School AU - Jean teaches Mikasa the art of Xbox. And Playstation, and Steam, and Nintendo-goddamnit, they just play _everything_.  
**Notes:** The couple that plays together stays together! I could have mentioned more games, but I had to cut it before it ended up becoming a wishlist. (Am I the only one who headed in a non-smut direction with this prompt?)

* * *

The canteen has descended into a crazed, _Battle Royale_-esque mob yet again. Jean barely escapes alive.

"Here!" He slams the bottle of water down in front of Marco. "I hope you like it... I almost got killed in there!"

Marco grins. "Jean, have I ever told you how much I love you?" He hands him the money. "Also, um... the chicken rolls look good."

"ARGH." Jean throws his hands up in the air and then crashes onto the bench. He slouches down so that his feet poke out the other side. "If you think I'm gonna do that again, you're insane." He shivers. "People grabbed my butt!"

"Who grabbed your butt?" The enquiry is spoken in a feminine tone that Jean thinks he knows, and when he turns around he sees Mikasa Ackerman, resplendent in black skinnies and a slightly sheer white t-shirt. Of course, she has to approach him while he's talking about butts. Generally Mikasa sticks with the girls, but occasionally she comes over to talk to Eren and Armin. She has never approached Jean directly before.

"Ah, Mikasa!" He jumps up off the bench. "Um, are you okay?"

She wiggles her fingers at Eren, standing somewhere behind him. "Can I talk to you?"

Holy shit. Marco, being his best friend, is kicking his leg and muttering inappropriately.

"Y-yeah, sure!" He motions to the bench.

She shakes her head. "Maybe... somewhere more private." Double holy shit. Marco has ceased kicking him, and seems to be choking on his water.

"Okay!" Mikasa turns to leave and he pursues her, but not before giving Eren the smuggest smirk he can. Marco is flailing his arms in a fashion that he's probably supported to construe as supportive.

He follows Mikasa down the hallway as she makes twists and turns. Finally she leads him into a deserted classroom, the board still bearing a few notes on Vietnam. Mikasa perches on a desk, and Jean sits in the chair nearby.

"This is probably going to sound weird," Mikasa begins, fiddling with her scarf, "but I have to make a request of you." She looks down at him. "Jean, you're the only person who can help me."

Oh, _man_. He tries to tell his brain to shut up, but as usual, it isn't listening. "Yeah?"

She casts her eyes downwards. "Will you... teach me how to play videogames?"

Jean can't help it; his jaw drops. "Wh-what?"

Mikasa bursts into an explanation, cheeks growing steadily redder. "Eren and Armin play them all the time and they look really fun but they never let me join in because I don't know how to play and it seems like a such a big part of their lives and I want to play together with them and-"

Jean cuts her off by grabbing her shoulders. "So you just want to play videogames with me?"

She nods. "I can pay you and everything!"

"No no no, no money!" He steps back from her. "I'll gladly help you."

She smiles, relief obvious on her face. "You will? Thank you so much!" She bounces up and gives him a brief hug. Jean freezes, arms locked to his sides, but before he can hug her back the embrace has ended.

"When can we begin?" She pulls out her phone.

"Tomorrow evening? You can come to mine, if you want."

"That'd be great! Here, give me your phone. I want to put in my number." He hands it over dazedly as she hands him hers. Her wallpaper is a picture of her and Sasha, faces squished together. Sasha looks ecstatic; Mikasa, not so much. He enters his real name into her contacts, which are mostly filled with nicknames (he's almost sure that 'Hitler's Daughter' refers to Annie), but when he checks his phone later Mikasa has put herself down as 'Raiding Buddy :)', which is so undeniably cute he almost drops the phone.

When he gets back to canteen he leaves straight away, waving distractedly to Mikasa as he drags Marco outside.

"What did she want?" Marco is almost more excited than he is.

Jean shushes him by grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. "She wants me to teach her how to play videogames!"

Marco nods enthusiastically. "Really? That's – oh, now I'm jealous."

"And since all my consoles and stuff are in my room..." he continues. Marco's face undergoes a rather pleasing shifting series of emotions.

"You're going to have a girl in your room?"

"I'm going to have a girl in my room."

Marco just stares at him, dumbstruck. Then he hugs him and knees him in the balls simultaneously.

"You're a real man!" Marco wails into his shoulder as Jean tries desperately to get his best friend off him. "You beat me!"

"Fu-" The bell cuts Jean off, and they almost get bowled over in a tide of humanity as the school surges out of the cafeteria.

During classes Jean finds it hard to pay attention, and his stuffy US history teacher, Mr. Shadis (otherwise known as Keef), gives him detention, but when he drives home he's still smiling. Then, he realises he has to clean his room, a feat he hasn't executed in six months.

He speeds the rest of the way home, almost breaks the front door when he barges in, and spends the remainder of the evening wailing about polish.

Classes the next day alternate between passing unbearably slowly and far too quickly. Marco keeps poking him, but Jean is unresponsive; he only reacts when Bertholdt tells him his shoelaces are untied, in response to which Jean automatically trips. He emerges unscathed, apart from almost knocking Christa over. Mostly, he only notices Mikasa teasing her friends and Eren's cool eyes on him.

When school is over, he waits outside the front door. Marco is delayed, but he isn't complaining about that like he normally would. Mikasa materialises promptly, Marco on her tail. She's laughing at something Marco is saying, and Jean feels a small knot of jealousy harden in his stomach. It isn't anything malevolent, really; he just envies Marco's easy way with people. Jean tends to stumble on his words, mispronounce things, and swear when he shouldn't.

"Look, there's the man of the moment!" Marco waves at him haphazardly; in reply, Jean weakly raises his hand. Anxiety has sapped all his energy.

Mikasa grins at him as she catches up to his pace. He tries to moderate his stride length; his lanky legs mean he tends to walk faster than others, but Mikasa doesn't need his help to walk alongside him. "You have that grey VW, don't you?"

"It goes, that's all I'll say," Jean admits, rubbing the back of his head. "I wanted a motorcycle, but..."

Mikasa grimaces. "They're not as good as they look."

"You have a bike?" Okay, that came out of nowhere.

"Armin and I fixed one up this summer." She sighs. "It wasn't a great one, and Armin and I aren't exactly top-class mechanics, so maybe that's why it broke down all the time. In the end, Eren tried to sneak out one night on it and we found him in the middle of night five hours away on the highway with a broken Honda and a concussion."

He can't help it; he laughs, and Marco joins in. Mikasa's grin grows wicked. "He's still paying us back for the damages... even though we ripped him off."

Marco pats her back. "This girl has entrepreneurial spirit! I like it! Waaaait, there's your car." He proceeds to take off like a bullet. Mikasa looks a little shocked.

"Marco's on the track team," Jean explains, "so he takes every chance he can to practice... aaaand he got shotgun. Do you mind sitting in the back?"

She shakes her head. "I like sitting in the back. More room, you know?"

By then, they've gotten to the car, and Jean wrestles with the lock for a few seconds before finally bursting it open. Marco dives into the car, but Mikasa lowers herself in all ladylike, even if she does show a lot more toned leg than a modest pair of denim cut-offs should allow.

The car starts easily for once, and Marco fiddles with the radio, managing the get the right station without abusing it. Mikasa rests her feet on centre console, bottle green Chucks knocking against his elbows. She takes her feet down quickly when he glances at her, but he waves dismissively at her and she puts them up again.

Jean manages to calm down somewhat while driving, but he still drums his fingers nervously on the wheel. Marco is twisted back around talk to Mikasa, who is talking animatedly, hands drawing invisible pictures.

When Marco gets out (one of his little sisters tries to crawl inside the car and onto Jean's lap to get a hug) he leaves him and Mikasa alone in the car. Luckily, the drive to his house is relatively short.

Mikasa breaks the silence. "Does Marco have a lot of brothers and sisters?"

Jean pauses to think. "Around... five? His mom's a nurse and he's the oldest, so he helps out around the house a lot."

"Hmm..." Mikasa stays deep in thought for the rest of the drive.

When they reach his house (a craftsman, natch), he cuts the engine and lets the car roll free for a few seconds before braking.

"Welcome to mi casa! ...Sorry, that was bad."

She flaps her hand. "I've heard worse."

As per usual, neither one of his parents are at home. His older brother is probably around somewhere, but Jean doesn't really know what Cam does nowadays. Ever since his brother came back from Iraq, he's been like a completely different person.

He tosses his bag onto the couch and Mikasa does the same. "C'mon, this way," he tells her, and Mikasa follows him without hesitation, up the stairs, down the corridor and into his room.

His room is actually kinda nice, he admits. There's a big window bisecting one wall, a low couch just under it; across from it, at the base of his double bed, are his TV and various gaming detritus. The walls are plastered with posters and certificates and ticket stubs and photos. A guitar leans against his desk, which is stacked with papers and highlighters and other implements associated with desperate high-school students. Yesterday, the floor was covered with a fine layer of discarded socks and candy wrappers, but after a rigorous cleaning session the hardwood floor had been unearthed for the first time in half a year.

Mikasa collapses into his couch, legs flying up in the air. "You room is sweet!" she announces, promptly hopping up to inspect the TV.

"I used to share it with my brother, but when he left I got sole custody, and when he came back, I refused to relinquish my claim." Jean makes a face. "Sharing a room is torture, especially if your brother leaves mouldy coffee mugs everywhere."

She winces. "Oh, Eren does that all the time." She then lets out a squeal. "It turns on all touchy!" She waves he finger in front of the Xbox's power button, getting more excited every time in turns on and off without her actually touching the button. "Waaait, that's probably bad for it..." She springs back as if shocked by electricity. "Stop laughing!" She pouts at him.

"I've never seen someone get so excited over a power button..." he comments, letting out a huff of laughter.

"Eren's doesn't do that... Is yours newer?" She roots around and emerges with a controller.

"Marco broke my old one in a multiplayer match against Bertholdt and Reiner," Jean admits, shuffling through a pile of games and managing to find the one he wants. He tosses it to Mikasa, who catches it nimbly.

"Tomb Raider?" She flips the box over. "I've seen the movies..."

"I thought it'd be good to start with – it has good controls, a decent plot, all that." He turns the TV on, and after a few moments fiddling, Mikasa slips the game into the tray. "And, of course, Lara Croft, First Lady of gaming."

Mikasa grabs the controller and flops into the couch, watching the logo flicker up on screen. Her face is a little unsettled.

"You okay?"

"...What if I'm bad?" Her eyes study the controller.

"Everyone's bad at videogames. The better ones just play a lot." She gives him a small smile, selects New Game, and Lara's English accent begins to echo around the room. _"A famous explorer once said that the extraordinary is in what we do, not who we are..."_

It's funny watching Mikasa react to the game. She winces at Lara's injuries; one memorable moment is the hip-impaling at the very beginning. Mikasa drops the controller and lets out a sympathetic groan of pain. "They abuse her!" she cries.

"There's worse," Jean says ominously. "Much worse."

There are lots more moments, like the QTEs where the man stabs her and the rock crushes her, but it is all worth it for the moment where the title of the game comes up across a gorgeous seascape vista; Mikasa's jaw actually drops. Then, she falls off a cliff.

Two or three hours later, Mikasa's phone chirps. Mikasa swears under her breath as Lara barely scrambles out of the way of one of the shield soldiers. "I hate these!" she explodes, just before he stabs her. She throws her controller down and sighs, before noticing the light beside her. "Oh, my phone...?" Jean moves over and snags the controller, exits to the menu, and quits; they just hit a checkpoint at the Base Exterior, so it doesn't matter that much.

"It's... six?" She looks rather shocked, phone slipping out of her hand.

"Time flies when you're having fun." Jean stands up and stretches, not noticing how Mikasa's eyes flicker to the strip of skin the motion bares. "Do you have to go now?"

She waves her phone vaguely. "Yeah, Eren's collecting me soon." Her hand drops. "Actually, I don't want to leave... You're a good game guide, you know that?"

Jean does a stupid pose, flexing him arm. "Just call me Jean 'Gamefaqs' Kirchtein!" Mikasa snickers as she stands up.

"Same time, same place in two days?" she asks as they walk down the stairs.

"It's a date," he says without thinking, but Mikasa looks oddly pleased.

"I'll be there."

Again, no one is in the kitchen, so they get out without incident. Jean waits with Mikasa on the curb. They don't talk, but the silence is companionable; Mikasa tips her head back and admires the stars, and Jean shoves his hands in his pockets and watches her. Her face is mostly neutral, but her eyes are shining.

"Jean...?"

"Hmm?"

"Thank you."

He is saved from having to respond by Eren's arrival. Mikasa hugs him briefly, and gets into the car quickly.

"Kirschtein?"

"Jaeger?" Jean is immediately put on edge; there is no love lost between him and Eren. There's nothing wrong with him, not necessarily, but their mindsets are totally different.

"...Nothing." And with that the cars sputters into life and speeds away. Jean doesn't look behind him as he goes back inside.

By Mikasa's fourth visit, they finish Tomb Raider. (Mikasa gets really happy at the grenade launcher bit.)

By her fifth, they have completed Portal. ("So this is where the cake thing came from?")

By her tenth, they've made their way through Bioshock. (Jean has to do the injection bits for her.)

The gaming goes on; Jean gets to revisit the seventh console generation through new, increasingly loud eyes. Catherine, Gears of War, Katamari Damacy, Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, Borderlands, Tales, Fable... the list goes on and on and on until he starts borrowing games from Marco, from Reiner, even from Connie. On one long weekend they marathon the entire Assassin's Creed series, from trippy heaven sequence to moustache sage. At the end of III, Mikasa cries.

(Jean does too, but Mikasa isn't telling.)

It's fascinating, though, watching her slowly come out of her shell as she completes mission after mission. Mikasa has a reputation as something of an ice queen, no matter how cliché that is. She's far more reserved than her friends, and doesn't makes trouble in class. Jean doesn't think he's seen her ever not complete an assignment, and as for missing a day of school... she hasn't done that either. She's kinda like a robot, even if she is a rather pretty one.

But Mikasa is not beautiful in the normal sense. Her jaw line is angular, her shoulders are wide, and her waist is thickened by muscle. None of that really matters all that much to Jean because when she smiles, he feels dizzy, and when she laughs, he feels sick.

In a good way.

Maybe he should go to a doctor?

The Tuesday after the marathon Jean sits beside Marco as he always does, pushing his lunch around. Marco is scribbling furiously in German on a sheet of paper, words sloping crazily up and down.

"Long night?" After Mikasa left Jean stayed up stupidly late trying to finish his homework, but Marco looks worse than he does.

"Mom had to do a 24-hour shift again," his friend mutters, adding in umlauts with such vehemence he almost stabs straight through the paper. "I had to help Martin with that nature project, I had to make dinner, and then Marcy got sick so I had to stay up with her..." His head tips forward. "Did you get me coffee?"

Jean shoves it towards him; Marco picks it up and chugs it, heedless of how hot it is. Jean ignores him and gets started on his roll.

There is a thump, and the babble of voices hushes. Jean looks up as discreetly as he can, and from beneath his eyelashes he spots a pair of bright green eyes.

Jean doesn't know why he hates Eren; he just does. It stems from childhood spats and teenage fights and has become near-adult loathing. Originally Eren used to be so intense that it turned Jean off him, but now...

About a year ago, the Jaegers' house burned down. Only Mikasa, Eren and his mom were inside. The two teenagers escaped, but Karla Jaeger did not. Ever since, Eren has gone totally off the rails; he's even been imprisoned. There are rumours of teenage gangs spearheaded by 'that Jaeger kid', and there are rumours that he's in with the mobs and can regularly be found in nightclub bathrooms snorting coke off models, but all Jean sees is a desperate boy clinging to his sister. Wasted potential. You can't destroy energy, but Eren damn near has.

"Yo." Eren waves his hand in front of his face. "You look pretty tired. Busy night?" There's a sneering tone in his voice that makes Jean's hackles rise.

"Yeah... I would sleep in class, but that'd be more your territory." Jean takes another bite, slow and deliberate. Marco stops writing, pen dangling uselessly over the page.

"Huh." Eren leans back, steel-capped toes banging into Jean's legs. "What'd you do last night?"

The urge to say 'your sister' is so strong. "Played games," he says evasively, surveying the space round him. A ring of boys has formed around their table, jaws collectively dropped; nobody in the canteen is even talking. Over at the girls' table Mikasa's back is turned to him as Sasha gesticulates wildly in front of her. Marco's mouth is pressed into a thin line.

"With?" Jean knows he's being led on, but everything about Eren is incredibly infuriating to him right now, from the curl of his lip to his unlaced boots. "Your boyfriend?" Marco drops his pen.

So like the moron he is, he rises to the bait. "No, actually. Your sister."

"_Shit,"_ he hears Connie hiss. Eren's face drops.

"About that..." Eren stands up. "Maybe you should stop."

"Why?" Jean matches his glare and stands up too. "Who died and made you her mom?"

Something in Eren snaps, and he grabs Jean's collar and yanks him towards him. Even though he looks skinny Jaeger's actually pretty strong, and as his shirt digs into his trachea he feels his face begin to go red. Jean grabs his hands and tries to pushes him off, but Eren isn't budging. "You," Eren snarls, "Are not allowed near Mikasa. Filth like you-"

"Aren't you the fucking filth here?" Maybe it's the lack of oxygen to his brain, but what Jean says next is idiocy of titanic proportions. "Cutting class, doing drugs, going to juvie...What would your mom think if she saw you like this? "

Eren throws him clean across the room, and Jean crashes through a knot of teenage boys to slam into the wall; he actually slides down the wall. It's like someone has turned up the volume as the canteen erupts into roars and shrieks. When Jean weakly raises his hand to the back of his head, it comes away red.

"You!" When he looks up, he swears he's hallucinating. Peaceful, pacifist Marco has hoisted Eren up by the scruff of his neck and is shaking him violently. "How-"

"Allow me." Mikasa materialises out of nowhere, and she looks absolutely furious. She pulls Eren away from Marco, hooking her arm around his neck and dragging him out the door; the bang of the door as it swings shut sounds like gunfire. Jean tries to stand up, but Marco catches him before he falls again.

"Come on." Marco pulls him up, and Jean lets himself be dragged. His ears are ringing, his vision is blurred and he feels like his muscles are made of wet paper.

Levi is clearing away the crowd, but pauses when he sees them. "Get him down to the nurse, Bodt. I'll handle this."

"Yes, sir." And with that Marco hauls him out of the canteen, and down to the nurse. There's a moderate amount of fussing, but as it transpires he isn't all that badly injured. He does get off the rest of the day's classes, which is nice, since he hasn't studied for that US History test at all.

The nurse has left the office when the door creaks open. Jean doesn't try to stand up; he feels better, but not that much better.

"Jean?" Mikasa's head pops inside the doorway.

Jean waves his arm around, and she takes this as permission to enter. She perches herself on the end of the bed, and with difficulty Jean manages to sit up. Her fists are clenched, and her knuckles are white.

"I'm sorry about earlier." Her head bows as she says this, and her hair falls forward to hide her face.

"Don't." Jean reaches out and pushes her hair aside; she looks up at him, shocked. To be honest, Jean feels the same way. His thumb hooks in under her jawbone. "Eren's to blame, isn't he?"

She nods, hand settling over his where it cups her cheek. "I just... I feel responsible for him. Ever since..."

"His mom?" he prompts.

"Yeah... he hasn't been the same. I've tried everything I can, but I think it's up to Eren, now." She bites her lip, and pulls away from him; his hand falls limply to his side. "See you tomorrow?"

He gives her a thumbs-up; stifling a giggle, she vacates the room. Jean collapses back onto the bed and stretches his hand up.

The hand that touched her face. Holy shit.

He really is whipped, isn't he?

The evening after next, while attempting to put stupid stickers all over Mikasa's Sackboy in Little Big Planet, all Jean can think is "_Worth it_."

The next Monday their physics teacher, Zoe the Zealous, is sick so for once they get a free class, which is nice, because if Jean had to endure another anti vs. auntie joke he might have snapped. Marco doesn't do physics, claiming that he is allergic to maths, so Jean generally sits beside Armin. This is nice, because Armin actually understands physics and helps him out when he can't figure out how to convert electronvolts to megaelectronvolts. He's like a blond, portable logbook.

Reiner and Annie sit in front of them, Reiner snorting angrily at his book while Annie stares off into space. Knowing her, she probably has tons of homework to complete but she won't do it; the teachers are too scared of her to make her turn in assignments.

"Hey, Armin!" Reiner swivels around. "I don't get this equation, why is it a surd?"

"You're supposed to square here," Armin explains, tapping the scribbled numbers with his pen. "And then you just factorize."

Reiner nods hurriedly, amending his work according to Armin's instructions. "Yeah... Yo, Jean!" Reiner's eyes land on him and Jean's back stiffens. Reiner isn't cruel or a bully, but he has a tendency to ask blunt questions that can get him and others into trouble. "How's Mikasa?"

The entire class tenses, all eyes focused on Jean. This is the quietest he has ever heard his classmates.

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" Jean finishes writing out a quote (_I will deny thee nothing_) and looks up from his essay on Othello.

Reiner grimaces, and Annie's shoulders hunch. Armin isn't even blinking.

"Everyone knows you like her." Annie's voice is neutral and expressionless.

"So?" Jean drops his pen. "It isn't exactly top secret."

Annie lets out a 'tch!', but doesn't say anything else. Reiner turns around robotically, and the rest of the class lapse into muffled conversation. He can feel Armin's eyes on him, and his pen digs into the meat of his thumb.

"Jean..." Armin isn't talking in his usual mauted voice. "I'm glad you're Mikasa's friend. She's... happier, nowadays." _Even if Eren isn't,_ Jean hears behind his words.

"I'm glad that you approve." Armin laughs shakily, and gets back to work. Jean tries to concentrate on Iago and dastardly co., but the words won't come. Frustrated, he stuffs the essay into his bag and leaves the room.

The radiator outside is for once void of students, so he takes the opportunity to sit on it and get warm, a state of being which is rare in his school. With everyone else in class, the school feels dead.

Except, of course, for one exception.

"Kirschtein." Eren is curled up on a bench at the other end of the corridor, a lump of red plaid and worn denim. He stands up and begins to make his way down the corridor.

"Jaeger." Jean doesn't look up, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

"What you doing out of class?" For once Eren sounds friendly, even though his eyes are still doing that 'intense madman green' thing.

"Free physics. You?"

"I got kicked out of maths."

Jean laughs, but not unkindly. "I don't blame you... La La Levi is a hardass."

There is silence, punctuated by the creak of a door and the distant roar of a teacher. Eren's brow is furrowed, like he's fighting some mental battle.

"Look, Kirschtein..." Eren sighs.

"Yeah?" Jean glances at him, fighting hard not to glare.

"... I'm sorry for being so weird about Mikasa." Jean raises an eyebrow at him. "She's had it hard, so I guess I was worried. She always protects me, so I thought it was my turn, but..."

"She doesn't need protecting."

Eren nods in relief. "Yeah! But if you do hurt her..." Eren grabs Jean's hand, and he almost yells when Eren presses his hand against the back of the radiator, where it is hottest. "You'll be in much worse pain than that."

"I get it! Let me go!" Jean gasps, and when Eren releases his hand he pulls it to his chest, fingers reddened. "Fuck, you're crazy! What the shit has Levi been teaching you?"

The other boy begins to respond, but the bell screeches and the corridors instantly fill, sweeping Eren away.

Later on, as Mikasa makes Master Chief blast Grunts into oblivion, Jean thinks. Not about his sore hand or Eren's acceptance, but something else.

A hard time?

Jean knows hard times well, what with his PTSD-suffering brother and corporate parents, but he doesn't know about Mikasa. He knows she lives with Eren and his father but that's it; otherwise, her private life is a mystery.

"Mikasa?"

"Mmm?" Her hair is scraped back into a stubby ponytail and locks of hair spring out from behind her ears; she pushes them back during load screens.

"Why do you live with Eren?"

To her credit, she doesn't flinch, or even pause the game.

He backpedals. "I mean, if you don't want to tell me-"

"No, it's fine." She brings up the map and studies it. "My parents... well, my mom's Japanese, and my dad's American, but my grandparents are very traditional and didn't like them getting married." Master Chief crouches behind a truck to barely dodge some fire. "But when my Japanese grandfather got sick, fifteen years of silence didn't matter. Kaachan and dad went over to care for him and my grandmother, but they didn't want to interrupt my schooling, so they left me behind to stay with Doctor Jaeger. Also, my Japanese is kinda terrible." She makes a mad dash for the exit. "When my grandfather died, my grandmother wouldn't let my parents leave. She's scared to live on her own. So they officially emigrated and left me behind again... I don't think they'll ever come back." She sighs as the game over screen floats up and she puts the controller to the side. "But lately, they've been asking me to join them."

"And you don't want to?"

She shakes her head. "I'm happy here. I have friends, I have family, and I have a future. Moving would be senseless." She smiles tiredly. "Now, d'you mind showing me how to do this bit?"

Later on, when Eren is due to pick her up, they stand in the shadow of the porch. Clouds scud across the sable sky, illuminated by a gibbous moon.

"Jean..." Mikasa shifts beside him, and suddenly she is standing right beside him, side pressed into his. "I'm glad you asked." She leans up to kiss his cheek and he goes into mental shut down, because _holy shit_. Is she blushing? She is, isn't she?

He must have gotten a blood rush or something, because everything after that is black. All he remembers is Mikasa clambering into Eren's car, and lying in his bed later with his hand pressed to his cheek.

As winter exams loom, his meetings with Mikasa become increasingly sporadic. There's so much study to do that even easygoing Marco is stressed, and Jean has to conduct several late night counselling sessions with him which mostly consist of his best friend bawling about college, jobs, etc. until Jean finally convinces him that the world won't actually end if he gets a C in geography.

Therefore, saying that he gets a surprise when Mikasa bursts into his room one day before the exams begin is something of an understatement.

"Mikasa...?" He drops his pen and turns around from his desk. She's breathing heavily, cheeks flushed, and for once she's actually wearing a skirt, maroon with thick black tights.

She grins at him rapturously, little dimples appearing in her cheeks. "Guess what?"

He shrugs, and she races over to him to drag him off his chair and dump him on his bed; he lands with a thud and Mikasa crouches down in front of him, nose almost touching his. "Eren challenged me to a match in Battlefield! I wish he picked something else, but whatever."

"And?" His knees lock unconsciously around hers.

"I completely dominated him... and he says now I can play games with him any time!" She bounces up and down, knees knocking against his.

"That's great!" She looks so ecstatic that he has to smile too.

Suddenly, Mikasa's face changes from elated to thoughtful. "... But I'd rather play with you."

Time stops as she pushes him back onto the bed and leans close to him. He can make out each individual eyelash, the flecks of black in her irises and-

She kisses him. Jean can't describe it, because whatever way he tries he'll just be doing the experience a disservice. He sits up and pulls her closer so that she is seated between his legs, skirt riding up.

When they break apart, his lips are swollen and Mikasa's eyes aren't quite focused. Her head falls onto his shoulder.

"Achievement unlocked!" she announces, voice muffled by his skin.

"That was _bad_." He winds a lock of her hair around his finger.

"Well, you're just gonna have to shut me up, aren't you?"

Jean does as he's told.

When he tells Marco the next day just before their English exam, he faints.


	7. Raindrops

**Jeankasa Week Day 7: Fantasies**

**Title:** Raindrops  
**Rating:** T**  
Fandom:** Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan  
**Characters:** Jean Kirschtein, Mikasa Ackerman, most of the 104th, Jeankasa  
**Summary:** Five times they didn't meet, and the one time they did.  
**Notes:** Gomen for being late (Catching Fire, yo!) but I'm finally doing one of these 'five things and one thing' thingies! It's like a fanfiction rite of passage, amirite? I guess this is where Jeankasa Week ends, but I'm glad to have participated!

* * *

**one**

Mikasa meets him in the local store. He measures out sugar and flour for her hurriedly as she wanders off to examine the vegetables section. He's the new shop boy; apparently the old one ran off to join the military. She doesn't think this new guy will last too long either.

"Miss Ackerman?" He pronounces her name wrong, putting too much emphasis on the end, but she responds anyways.

"Thank you," she murmurs, taking the bags from his hands. He's measured then out correctly, she notes, which is more than the last one could do.

"Yeah, sure-" He looks up at her then and his cheeks flush red. Mikasa has to grab the butter before he drops it. "Sorry!"

"No matter," she reassures him, laying her hand over his momentarily.

"Um..." He swallows audibly. "That looks like a lot of stuff... Can I carry it for you?"

"I don't know, can you?" she counters. He looks so surprised that she can't help the small giggle that escapes her. "Sorry, I'm just messing. I can handle it all myself." She throws the bag of peat over her shoulder easily and slides the other bags into the crook of her elbow. "Besides, don't you have other customers?" It's true; behind her, a long line of disgruntled patrons is beginning to form.

"Right..." He ducks his head and scribbles a receipt for her, slipping it into one of the bags. "Have a nice day?"

She waves at him as she leaves; when she gets outside the sun is blinding, even though she is within the shadow of the wall. She drops the bags for a few seconds and rummages around in one of them; after a few seconds, she emerges victorious with the receipt. She unfolds it quickly, and sure enough, he has scrawled his name across the bottom of the slip.

"Jean Kirschtein," she tries, the shadow of the wall bisecting her. She grins to herself and sets off back hope; Kaachan and Papa will be waiting.

If she starts going on more errands to the shops, her parents don't point it out.

**two**

For some unknown reason, Erwin has assigned the new gaggle of recruits to her for hand to hand training.

"Haven't they been training for three years? What the hell have the Trainees being doing?" Mikasa knows she's complaining, but Levi has to listen to her. She listened to him bitch about the state of the men's bathrooms last night, so now it's her turn.

"I suspect most of them spend their entire time drunk in order to endure the trainees. Hell, that's what I would do." Levi adjusts his cravat prissily.

"According to Erwin, that's exactly what you did."

"Shut up," Levi sighs, "and go train the gremlins. Try to be nice. Those little softies aren't as tough as I am."

She scowls at him and flips off his back when he leaves.

When she enters the yard, it is stuffed to the brim with newbie scouts, stretching and warming up. She slips into the middle of them almost unnoticed. They're probably expecting some kid of ripped monster, not slim, womanly Mikasa, so none of them notice her, and she takes the opportunity to observe them. There's a few that show promise, but most of them need severe training if they're going to get anywhere.

She decides to reveal herself and clambers up onto the cart in the middle of the yard; once on top, she does her best whistle, the one that Hanji swears could break glass. The entire class stops talking, shocked into silence.

"Listen up, kiddies! I am Squad Leader Mikasa Ackerman, and I am your CQC instructor!" There's a hushed babble of incredulous voices, and it persists until she flips off the cart to land in the middle of a knot of newbies; they scatter like bowling pins. "I don't know what you've been taught at the academy, but all of you are doing it wrong, and in the Scouting Legion 'wrong' means 'dead.' Got it?" They nod en masse. "Now, I want all of you to divide into pairs. Pick someone who is of a similar build to you." They quickly separate into groups of two and begin to spar. Mikasa walks around them and interferes where she can, correcting stances, fixing holds and giving out to the ones who go too far.

One such duo consists of two boys. As far as Mikasa can tell they are almost evenly matched, even if they are spitting insults at each other the entire time.

"Eren!" A blond boy breaks off from his partner to hover anxiously over them. "Are you okay?"

"Armin, go away!" Presumably this is Eren, and if she remembers correctly his last name is Jaeger; his friend's is Arlert. Jaeger slams his opponent's head into the ground; the boy pinned underneath him manages to get a hit in on his leg. Jaeger releases him, but before the other boy can retaliate Mikasa has caught Jaeger's collar. "Wha-"

"We are sparring," she says icily. "Not trying to kill each other. Am I clear?"

Jaeger wriggles a bit. "Lemme go!" She lets go of him and pushes him away; he trips over his own feet and sprawls in the dirt. The other boy lets out a squawk of laughter and she rounds on him. "What's so funny, you little shit?" She points in the direction of the barracks, not looking away from the boy in front of her. "Jaeger, go to medical." He hesitates, but not for long. "Now! Arlert, please stop gaping at me like that, please lower your eyebrows, and please return to sparring." Armin bows nervously and goes back to his partner. "Now, Private..."

"Kirschtein, ma'am." He spots the looks she gives him and hastily corrects himself. "Jean Kirschtein, Squad Leader." The name rings a bell. Erwin has mentioned him as being close to one of the casualties of the battle of Trost. He's gone under psych evals and come out clear, but Erwin wasn't so sure. He's taller than her, with sandy hair and sallow skin, but he looks a little gaunt, and the bruises on his face aren't helping. Mikasa won't go easy on him, though. She didn't get a reputation as the woman worth a hundred soldiers by being nice to the recently bereaved.

"Get into position." He drops into stance and she sighs through her nose. "What are you doing, shitting? You're too wide! Feet closer together." When he fails to respond, ears turning red, she braces her hands on his shoulders and nudges him into position with her own feet. "Square up. Stop hunching over like an old man." She pushes his shoulders back. "And relax." He stiffens up more, if anything. "I said, relax!" She drives her fingers into the muscle of his shoulders and he loosens up with shock. "Good." She steps back and mirrors his stance. "Now..." She motions towards herself with her hand. "Give me your best shot."

He flies at her quickly, winding up a haymaker, but she dodges easily to the side and gets behind him. She slides her leg between his and jabs him painfully in the back; he slumps forward and she winds her arms around him in a chest hold.

"Surrender?" she asks, her lips right beside his ear. Up close she can appraise his condition more easily, and it's easy to tell he's no slouch. He struggles stubbornly, and she decides to go for shock tactics; she grabs his butt. He leaps away from her as if burned and aims a kick at her face; she blocks it and ducks under his arm, but he follows up and catches her on the shoulder. "Good," she states, bouncing back and guarding; he tries to break through but it is easy to predict his blows. He lets out a grumble of frustration and feints a left kick. Mikasa sees through it without trouble and grabs his right arm as it comes towards her, twists it and flips him violently onto his back; he wheezes as he slams into the ground. Mikasa is crouched above him, knee pressed into his chest. "Do you give?" She twists his arm harder and he lets out a yelp of pain, but something strange crosses his face, and out of nowhere he head butts her, lips brushing against hers in the process. Mikasa lets go and falls back as fast as she can. She stares at him, shaken, as a smirk creeps onto his lips.

Mikasa is six years older than this Kirschtein kid, but he's got her thinking about something she's never given much thought to before. She reaches her hand out to him in a gesture of peace and after a moment's hesitation, he takes it and she pulls him back to his feet. The contact is brief, but the sensation lingers, and she knows she's not the only one from the way his hand clenches after. "Well done," she says woodenly, noticing the eyes of the entire class on her and Kirschtein. "What the hell are you all staring at? Get back to work!"

Her efforts are futile; the bell goes straight after, calling the recruits to mess, and the people drain away until she is alone with Kirschtein. There's something unreadable in his amber eyes as he examines her, and she realises that at fifteen he's taller than her at twenty-one.

"Thank you," he states, dropping into a bow. Involuntarily she bows back; when her back is straight, he flees. She grabs her water bottle and takes a long drink from it, eyes following his back as he disappears into the castle.

When Levi inquires later if any of the recruits caught her eye, she doesn't respond.

**three**

It is the beginning of November, and the city is beginning to ice over, foliage falling faster than the cleaners can sweep it up.

She isn't exactly paying attention to where she is going. She needs to get this assignment to Hanji within five minutes or all her work for that extra credit is null and void. Of course, she just had to stop into a coffee shop for a caffeine hit and had managed to get tangled in an interminably long line and an argument with an obtuse barista. The boots she's wearing aren't helping either; they're knee-high and the heels are much higher than her usual Keds. She doesn't even know why she bothered to wear them, but all her pants were dirty so she had to wear a dress, and sneakers hardly go with pretty floral print skirts unless you're under eighteen.

So, the one time Mikasa Ackerman doesn't pay complete attention to her surroundings, she crashes straight into someone like some ditzy blonde damsel out a goddamn rom-com. Her papers fly everywhere and she jerks forwards onto her knees, unable to land properly in the way her years of practising aikido have ingrained into her. She winces as the shock of impact judders through her knees and up her thighs, but is secretly grateful that she already gulped down her hazelnut latte. Those things are expensive.

"Fuck... Sorry!" She finally gets a glimpse of the unfortunate soul she almost bowled over, and her first thought is _'Shit, he's hot!' _because he_ is_. He's the sort of guy that Sasha would describe as edible; his eyes are a strange tawny shade, like a lion's, and his dirty blond hair is undercut. White headphones hang around his neck, knocked off his ears by the force of their collision; she can hear the tinny tones of glitch music, the type that Eren won't believe she listens to. When he helps her up his hands wrap easily around her forearms, and Mikasa isn't exactly slight. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she confirms, blowing her hair out of her face. "But...my papers..." He waves a sheaf of paper at her, and Mikasa's heart unclenches. "Thank God." She takes them from him as graciously as she can and checks her knees; luckily, her stockings didn't get torn. They're ones Christa knitted for her, so God knows what she put in them. Kevlar? They have fallen down to pool around the collar of her boots to reveal the pale skin of her legs, so she tugs them up quickly. When she glances up there's a dusting of red along the stranger's cheeks, but it only serves to make him look more attractive. "I never caught your name..." she prompts.

He takes a few seconds to respond, eyes darting up from her now-covered thighs. "Jean Kirschtein."

She sticks her hand out to him. "Mikasa Ackerman." He takes her hand and shakes it. The touch feels more intimate than it should. His phone beeps and he retracts his hand quickly to check it.

"I gotta go...?" he says, stuffing his phone back into his pocket.

"See you around, Jean." The lights go green and she gets caught up in the crowd, swept away across the street.

When she looks behind her, his hand is still in the air; she smiles to herself, realises that she now has only three minutes, and begins to run.

**four**

When she first meets him he's standing on the street kerb, breath solidifying into clouds of gas before him. She's a little drunk and a lot angry, and the various shots of tequila and sambuca and vodka that Annie had practically forced down her throat are beginning to kick in. Combine that with post messy breakup anger (Annie, wisely enough, decided to steer clear of Jaegermeister) and you have a dangerous recipe, which results in regimented Mikasa Ackerman approaching a prostitute outside a night club.

He glances at her over the fur collar of his parka from out the corner of his eye as she advances. Mikasa is young, pretty, and female, so she guesses she falls outside his usual clientele. He is rather handsome, though; the lines of his face are sharp and clear in the neon light, and he's tall, even if his clothes are a little too big for him.

She approaches him as she would a cornered animal. "You a cop?" he says brusquely. She shakes her head vehemently. "Well then, are you lost? You don't look like the type to sniff around red-light districts." There's a strange glimmer of amusement in his eyes as she shrinks slightly under his words.

"I'm not," she agrees, and leaves it at that. He shifts nervously, eyes darting from side-to-side.

"What do you want?" he asks finally, after a few minutes' pregnant silence.

"What do you think, chewing gum? No. You." The alcohol is burning at the base of her skull, clouding her judgment.

He laughs bitterly. "How long?"

"_Until I get my sense back,"_ she wants to say, but maybe he'd take that wrong. "One night."

He considers her meticulously, taking in the sober colours of her jacket and jeans, the dirty red of the threadbare scarf twined around her neck. Annie had wanted her to take it off and leave it behind, but she couldn't. She's already lost Eren; can't she still have this little fragment of him?

"Two hundred and fifty," he says finally. She has a feeling he's overpriced himself to scare her off, but such a simple thing as money won't deter her. Mikasa is nothing if not stubborn.

"Done." She yanks her wallet out of her pocket and counts out the bills as fast as she can. She needs to get this over with before she chickens out. He checks every bill she hands to him with a practised eye, but obviously she hasn't cheated him so it checks out. "What's your name?"

His face freezes up a tiny bit, lips twisting, but he sighs after a few seconds and relents. "Jean."

"Mikasa," she replies, and sets off across the street quickly; her car is parked over in a corner. She has no clue how Annie's going to get back but she's sure she can take care of herself.

She can hear him jogging behind her, but he only catches up when she reaches the car. "You're not driving, are you?" he demands, watching her try to unlock her car with a raised brow.

"Yes," she hisses, missing the lock yet again, but in an instant he is right beside her, hip pressed up against hers, large hands pulling the key out of her slackening grip.

"No, you're not," he breathes into her ear, and steps back. She turns around, and her back presses against the glass of the window; his hand comes to rest beside her head on the roof. The corner of his mouth is twisted up in a smirk. "You're drunk. I'd rather not die in a DUI incident."

He has a valid point, so after glaring at him for a few seconds she slinks around to the other side of the car and gets into the passenger seat without complaint. She risks a glance at him when he pulls out of the space, and she swears he's smirking.

She doesn't remember a lot of the drive itself, only the nervous twinges in her stomach, the directions she offered him every so often, and the white span of his fingers across the steering wheel. Luckily, they don't meet anyone in the parking lot or the lobby. Mikasa doesn't know most of her neighbours, but still; this is a situation she would rather not be caught in.

Jean's eyes are heavy on her back as she unlocks the front door, as they wait for the elevator. Usually Mikasa takes the four flights of stairs leading up to her apartment, but something tells her if she tried that now she would tumble all the way back down. When the elevator arrives it is vacant; she breathes a wordless prayer to whatever deity is up there.

"So," he starts, leaning against the bar across from her. In the stark light of the elevator she can make him out more clearly, see the faint bruises trailing under the grubby neck of his shirt. "I have one rule."

She tips her head to the side in silent consent.

"No lip-to-lip contact. Otherwise, I'm game."

She nods. "You're uncomfortable. Is it because I'm..."

"A girl?" He studies the broad span of her shoulders, the hard angles of her hips; it discomfits her to be looked over like this. Most people see her liquid brown eyes and silky hair and expensive clothes and dismiss her as a little girl almost immediately, some rich expat's kid, but Mikasa is much, much more than that. "I suppose. More lonely men around here than women." That's partly what she guessed.

The elevator dings as it stops, and the doors slide open creakily; the brass four on her door winks at her. She hadn't wanted Apt. No.4 on the fourth floor; her mother had always been unduly superstitious about the number, and part of it had rubbed off on Mikasa, but she didn't have much choice in the matter.

Maybe that's why she did this. She's paying, isn't she? Everything he does, she will have complete control over.

How she gets the door unlocked is beyond her, but she manages to stumble over the threshold and grab Jean's hand to drag him in. Her apartment is dark but she doesn't bother with lights, instead heading straight for her bedroom, toeing her shoes off en route. She trips into the door and it swings open with a bang; Jean winces behind her, hand clenching around hers. She'll have to check the damage to the wall tomorrow. For now...

Jean is shrugging his parka off his shoulders; it falls to the floor. Mikasa copies him, leather jacket following his. She has troubles with the buttons of her shirt; growling, she yanks it open. A few button ping off; Jean, watching her as he unbuckles his belt, lets out a snicker.

"No need to be so eager." His sentence is punctuated by the crumple of his pants to the ground. "I'm all yours."He moves behind her, hips flush with hers, unbuttoning her shirt and pulling it off her shoulders, sliding his hands down her stomach to the waist of her jeans, pushing them down too. His fingers catch in her underwear and press against her hipbones. Her head falls forward as he presses his lips to her neck.

"_Eren never did this,"_ her mind whispers. It was true, he didn't, but that was because he was inexperienced...right?

Jean guides her back around to face him and pushes her gently backwards until her knees hit the bed; she falls backwards with a thump. He hovers over her, and she notices he's still wearing his shirt.

"Why don't you...?" She fingers the hem of it.

"...Do I have to?" There's strange appealing note in his voice, and she realises that maybe he doesn't have to take off his clothes all the time, especially if he does most of his work outside. He is looking out at window, at the city lights arrayed like diamonds in a jeweller's.

"Please." She knows she's paying, and that she could just rip it off him if she so wished, but she can't. Luckily, he complies and pulls it off over his head.

Now she gets why he didn't want to take it off; his chest is heavily scarred, cruel lines crisscrossing his body. In the moonlight through the window the bruising down his neck to his sternum is stark against the pale white of his skin. She raises her hand to trace the lines, to brush her fingers across the contusions, to examine the hollows between his ribs, but he grabs her hands somewhat roughly and presses his thumbs to her pulse.

"Stop." Her hands go limp in his grasp, and she glances up at him; his eyes are hard. "Please don't..." She nods jerkily, and he lets her go; his hands return to her shoulders, anchoring her to the bed. Every time he shifts his hips brush against hers, and it sends little flares of sensation down her thighs and thigh her stomach. He must notice, she thinks, because he keeps on doing it, rolling his hips into hers. She can't take it so she flips him over, to see how he'll react. He smirks at her sharply.

"If you want rough, I'll give you rough."

He makes good on his word, and much more besides; Mikasa is a wreck when he's done with her two hours later, careful thought process dismantled until all she's capable of is expletives and his name, and occasionally both together. The sheets are sticky with sweat and her hair is clinging to her forehead. She fought back, though; Jean's clawed back attests to that. As he slides off her to land at her side, she catches his fingers in hers.

"Wow."

"What, no-one ever go down on you before?" She sputters, and when she looks at him he's smiling; it's strange, seeing that kind of earnest look on his wide lips. She shakes her head. "Poor girl. Lucky for you, I eat pussy like-"

"You have a degree in it. I heard you earlier." She hooks one leg over his.

"You kept up, though. You must have a crazy regime."

He doesn't know what he's getting into; no-one ever asks Mikasa about fitness, because she'll spend thirty minutes yakking on about BMI ratios and crunches. She decides to give him a break, simply saying, "I do a lot of martial arts."

He snorts at that and runs his hand down the arc of her waist to her leg. Mikasa closes her eyes and indulges in the feeling, but it stops sharply, and he pulls his hand away.

"Why the fuck do you have a picture of a manatee beside your bed?"

She bursts out laughing like a maniac, and he looks at her likes she's snapped. "Sorry," she gasps, moments later. "It's a joke I have with an old friend... I once compared to a guy to a cow when he... um..."

"Came?" Jean offers. His voice is tremulous with suppressed laughter.

"Y-yeah, and he used to do a lot of swimming, so my friend starting calling him..." If she starts giggling like a teenage girl in front of him because of Annie, she will never look at her friend again. "She called him a sea-cow... No-one ever notices, so I was surprised you did. That's all." His chest is shaking with laughter, so in an effort to re-establish dominance she rolls over until she's astride him, the inside of her legs pressing against his sides. His hands rest on her hips.

"How any people, exactly, have had the chance to notice this?"

"Not many," she admits, trailing her fingers along the arch of his neck; his eyes dull a little.

"That's what I thought..." His eyes are trained intently on hers. "...Why did you come up to me? I'm sure a pretty girl like you can get all the tail she wants." She bites her lip, and he observes the gesture closely. Mikasa pulls his arms away from her hips to pin them above his head, and leans over. Her unbound breasts brush against his chest, and her nose is dangerously close to his. Up this close, she can see the faint smatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

"I..." Why did she, really? It wasn't sexual gratification, nor was it a desire to forget Eren. More like... "Control." He raises an eyebrow. "I... I don't control anything. Anyone. Not even my own life... For as long as I can remember I've been subservient, the best daughter, the perfect sister, the trophy girlfriend... So I guess I wanted to control you." Her nose brushes his. "I'm sorry." She pauses. "But... can I control you?"

"You're paying." His voice is quiet and soft, much more so than it has been all night.

"But, if I wasn't... would you let me?"

He doesn't answer; instead, he raises his head a little, and presses his lips to hers. Mikasa digs her fingers into his wrists and kisses him back; he tastes like her. Somehow, this is more intimate than the sex was, and Jean seems to agree; when she opens her mouth he lets out a little mewl. She's too tired, though, and she collapses onto his chest, nose crashing clumsily into his jaw.

"Go to sleep," he says, smoothing down her hair. "I'm here all night, aren't I? Don't worry, I won't pickpocket you...much."

But Jean falls asleep before she does, and she takes the opportunity to write her name and number on the inside of his wrist. She snuggles down beside him, and observes the last traces of muscle on his sides. Presumably he had been toned and strong once, but too much time and not enough food will steal all musculature; his too-large clothes are testament to that. His eyelashes are stubby and light; she caresses them lightly with the tip of her finger. He pouts childishly, but doesn't wake up, and she wonders idly when the last time he slept in an actual bed was.

Eventually, after receiving a furious call from Annie, she nods off.

When she wakes up, her bed and apartment are empty. She didn't expect anything less or anything more, but her heart still falls.

Two days later, during a tense dinner with Armin and Eren, she gets a call from an unknown number. Against her better judgment she answers it, screams in the middle of the restaurant, and has to hang up before Eren and Armin can hear Jean's hoarse laughter.

(She calls him back later in a public phone booth, and later wishes she'd done it at home.)

**five**

The summons is somewhat surprising. Nowadays, the old occult practices have been largely abandoned as people band together to defend each other, but it makes a nice change from the centuries of petty war Mikasa has seen with her own scarlet eyes. It also means that most demons go largely unemployed, which is fine by most of them. They are sinners, after all, so it is natural that they would take any opportunity to be slothful.

So one day while she's minds her own business on the edges of a punishment field, she disappears, which comes as quite a shock. A ray of light falls on her along with the sensation of being set on fire; she takes a few seconds to respond, and in those few seconds she is plucked from Hell and dropped into the mortal realm.

When she materializes, she is in the middle of an old stone church. The beams on the roof are rotten and the stained glass windows are mostly broken, a few shards of red casting crimson light across the floor. She attempts to step forward, but she is constrained, and when she casts her eyes to the floors she finds out why; there is a circle of salt around her feet, chords crisscrossing to form a messy star. Drops of blood litter the floor, and she crouches down to dab her fingers and taste it. It is human and thick with life, and it sends thrills up her skin. She raises herself to her full height of seven feet and looks down her nose at the human in front of her.

He's young, she thinks, maybe in his mid-teens, but taller and sturdier than most. His hands are raised in front of him, and she can see the raw wound on his wrist; the blood must be his.

"Stop!" He's probably trying be commanding, bus his voice quavers. "I am Jean Kirschtein, and I am your master!"

"Oh?" Mikasa hasn't talked in a while, so her voice is rough and throaty, and Jean takes a slight step back. "Are you? I don't see any master, just a scared little boy." He bristles again, and she can feel the potency of his anger rolling off him. The young always feel more intensely. "But since you've told me your name... I am Mikasa Ackerman, servant of Asmodeus, bearer of the Dawncutter. What is it you wish?" Mikasa looks more like a succubus, what with the huge curly ram's horns and her bare striped body, but she's a deadly warrior with no need to tempt people to kill them.

"I wish for you to fight alongside the humans and..." His hands clench into fists. "Defeat the Titans."

She tips her head to the side. She's heard about the Titans, the anthromorphic monstrosities who kill endlessly. Perhaps they'll give her a challenge. Dawncutter's blade is beginning to dull.

"I accept this task. With what shall I be bound?"

In response he lifts up a carmine scarf and approaches her carefully, making sure not to smudge the ring of salt with his feet. He lassos it deftly round her neck, but the fabric constricts violently around her throat and begins to strangle the life out of her. She begins to cough and hack, and he stumbles backwards from her, falling on his ass. The scarf works its magic, and within moments Mikasa has shrunk over a foot. Her dark hair recedes back into her scalp until it reaches her chin, and her skin loses its markings to turn ivory white. She falls to her knees as the clothes materialise, exact replicas of his down to the winged crest on her breast. Her eyes flash crimson momentarily and finally fade to charcoal black.

She hunches over for a few seconds, couching and retching while he watches, stunned. "Clever," she finally rasps. "The embroidery in the scarf?"

"A seal," he replies, and a satisfied smirk curls his lip. "You're stuck here now until I give you leave to go." She tugs uselessly on the scarf, which has fused to her neck. "I didn't think it would be so...brutal. I'm sorry."

"You're apologising to a demon?"She straightens up slowly, unsure of her new, slight form... well, slight in comparison to her real one. This body is athletic and muscled; when she brushes her fingers across her stomach she can feel the telltale bumps of well-defined abdominal muscles.

"So what?" He draws nearer to her. "I'm going to let you out now." He reaches forward, and with his finger breaks the circle of salt. Mikasa is on him in an instant and he yells, catching her on instinct, but she is bound to him and she cannot harm him, however much she would like to. As much she yearns for his blood, to rip veins and arteries out of him like looses threads, to tear open the flesh of his skin, to crack open his skull, to suck the marrow from his bones, she can't touch a single hair on his head, so she does the next best thing.

She kisses him hard, lips colliding savagely with his; he shudders beneath her and groans, mouth dropping open. She takes the opportunity and deepens it, hands pinning his shoulders. He's so alive, with so much energy, and she absorbs it like sunshine. He's almost totally in her power, whimpering out of pain and pleasure, but she has to stop before she drains him completely, as much as she'd like to keep going. When she pulls away his lips are sticky with blood, and she wipes it away with a finger and licks it off, not wasting a drop.

"Don't do that again," he croaks after minute.

"Sorry. Couldn't resist. I am a demon, after all... and virgin blood always tastes better." He splutters as she stands up and pulls him up with her roughly. "Now, master...where to?"

His gaze darkens, and his grip on her wrist tightens cruelly, but she doesn't feel it. "Follow me," he says finally, "and don't do anything unless I tell you to."

"Of course." He pulls her out of the door and they emerge into the moonlight. Mikasa closes her eyes and moves her thumb to rest on his quickened pulse.

An impetuous boy, abhorrent monsters, and a sword. This sort of chance is one that a demon very rarely gets, and Mikasa is going to grasp it with both hands.

**first**

Except none of that happens. The first time she meets him he stutters and eventually stammers out a compliment which she brushes off graciously, drifting out the door to her brother's side. She doesn't even get his name. Maybe she should have made more of it, but it is too late, far too late for that now.

**last**

She can't breathe. Her lungs are crushed, and when she speaks it is more blood than air. Her vision is fading, blurring around the edges like an old photo. Jean cradles her in his arms, amber eyes wide with desperation. Blood oozes from between his teeth to stain his lips and drip down his chin.

"Is Eren...?" Her hand reaches weakly up to him; he catches her frigid fingers, raises them to his cheek.

"He's fine. Mikasa...we're almost there, I can taste it. Victory is so close...!"

She snorts. "If so, why are you crying?"

"You know full well!" His tears spot the crusted blood on her face. "...You know better than anyone."

She wants so badly to close her eyes, but she can't. She has to look at him all she can, right before the end. "Thank you."

His lips tremble, and he presses a chaste kiss to her mouth, staining his own red.

The sky behind him is burning with the colours of sunset. Beyond the walls, the land is so open that she feels more insignificant than ever, just a miniscule speck compared to the scale of the entire universe.

She brushes her fingers over the line of his jaw and gives him one last radiant smile.

"You know... I was thinking about letting my hair grow out..."

The last thing she sees is him, smiling, pink tears trickling down his face.


End file.
